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SLAVERY IN HISTORY, 



EY 



ADAM aUROWSKI 



Suum cuiquc. 



NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY A. B. BURDICK 

145 NASSAU STEEET. 
I8G0. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year I860, by 

ADAM GUROWSKI, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 

Southern District of New York. 



So tng iTrtcnir 



JAMES S. WADSWORTH, 



OF GENESEO. 





CONTENTS. 




Introduction 


• 


I. 


PAOB 

vii 


Egyptians 


• 


n. 


1 


Phoenicians . 


• 


in. 


. 17 


Libyans 


• 


IV. 


. 27 


Carthaginians 


• 


v. 


. 31 


Hebrews, or Beni-Israel . 


. 35 






VI. 




Nabatheans 


• 


VII. 


. 63 


Assyrians and 


Babylonians 


. 69 






vm. 




Medes and Persians 


. 


. 75 






IX. 




Aryas — Hindus 


# 


• * * 


. 81 



VI 


CONTENTS. 




X. 


Chinese 


. 




XI. 


Geeeks 


. 




xn. 


RoMANS- 


-Republicans 




xni. 


RoMANS- 


-Political Slates 



XIY. 

Cheistianity : its Chueches and Ceeeds 



Gauls 
Geemans 

longobaeds — italians 
Feanks — Feench . 



XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 



XIX. 

Beitons, Anglo-Saxons, English . 

XX. 

Slavi, Slavonians, Slaves, Russians 

XXI. 

Conclusion . 



. 89 

. 97 

. 125 

. 149 

. 165 

. m 

. 188 

. 199 

. 207 

. 223 

. 233 

. 251 



For the first time in the annals of humanity, do- 
mestic slavery, or the system of chattelhoocl and traffic 
in man, is erected into a religious, social and political 
creed. This new creed has its thaumaturgns, its tem- 
ples, its altars, its worship, its divines, its theology, 
its fanatical devotees ; it has its moralists, its savants 
and sentimentalists, its statesmen and its publicists. 
The articles of this new faith are preached and con- 
fessed by senators and representatives in the highest 
councils of the American people, as well as in the 
legislatures of the respective States ; they are boldly 
proclaimed by the press, and by platform orators and 
public missionaries ; in a word, this new faith over- 
shadows the whole religions, social, intellectual, po- 
litical and economical existence of a large portion of 
the Republic. 

The less fervent disciples consider domestic slavery 
as an eminently practical matter, and regard those of 



VU1 

an opposite opinion as abstruse theorizers ; and history 
is called in and ransacked for the purpose of justify- 
ing the present by the past. 

Well : history contains all the evidences — multifa- 
rious and decisive. 

It is asserted that domestic slavery has always been 
a constructive social element : history shows that it 
has always been destructive. History authoritatively 
establishes the fact that slavery is the most corroding 
social disease, and one, too, which acts most fatally 
on the slaveholding element in a community. 

Not disease, but health, is the normal condition of 
man's physical organism : not oppression but freedom 
is the normal condition of human society. The laws 
of history are as absolute as the laws of nature or 
the laws of hygiene. As an individual cannot with 
impunity violate hygienic law — as nature always 
avenges every departure from her eternal order : so 
nations and communities cannot safely deviate from 
the laws of history, still less violate them with impu- 
nity. History positively demonstrates that slavery 
is not one of the natural laws of the human race, any 
more than disorders and monstrosities are normal 
conditions of the human body. 

History demonstrates that slavery is nbt coeval 



IX 

with, nor inherent in, human society, but is the off- 
spring of social derangement and decay. The health- 
iest physical organism may, under certain conditions, 
develop from within, or receive by infection from 
without, diseases which are coeval, so to speak, with 
the creation, and which hover perpetually over animal 
life. The disease, too, may be acute or chronic, ac- 
cording to the conditions or predispositions of the 
organism. History teaches that domestic slavery 
may, at times, affect the healthiest social organism, 
and be developed, like other social disorders and 
crimes, so to speak, in the very womb of the nation. 
As the tendency of vigorous health is to prevent 
physical derangements and diseases, so the tendency 
of society in its most elevated conception is to pre- 
vent, to limit, to neutralize, if not wholly to extirpate, 
all social disorders. Not depravity and disease, but 
purity and virtue, are the normal condition of the indi- 
vidual : not oppression but freedom is the normal 
condition of society. 

Some investigators and philosophers discover an 
identity between the progressive development of the 
human body and the various stages of human so- 
ciety — beginning with the embryonic condition of 
both. More than one striking analogy certainly ex- 



ists 'between physiological and pathological laws, and 
the moral and social principles which ought to be ob- 
served by man both as an individual, and in the ag- 
gregate called society. Thus some of .the pathologic 
axioms established by Rokitansky* (the greatest of 
living pathologists) are equally sustained by the 
history of nations. 

"No formation is incapable of becoming diseased in one or 
more ways. Several anomalies coexisting in an organ commonly 
stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect. Thus, 
deviation in texture determines deviation in size, in form." 

The following pages will demonstrate that nations, 
and communities, may become diseased in many 
ways ; and that in proportion as their social textures 
deviate from the normal, do they become more and 
more deformed and demoralized. 

"All anomalies of organization involving any anatomical 
change manifest themselves as deviations in the quantity or 
quality of organic creation, or else as a mechanical separation of 
continuity. They are reducible to irregular number, size, form, 
continuity, and contents." 

Oppressions, tyrannies, domestic slavery, chattel- 
hood, are so many mechanical separations of conti- 
nuity, which in the social organic creation is liberty. 

* A Manual of Pathological Anatomy, by Carl Rokitansky, M. D. 
Translated from the German, by Edward Swaine," M. D., Fellow of the 
Eoyal College of Physicians. 



XI 

" General disease engenders the most various organs and tex- 
tures according to their innate, general or individual tendencies, 
either spontaneously or by dint of some overpowering outward 
impulse, a local affection which reflects the general disease in the 
peculiarity of its products. The general disease becomes local- 
ized, and, so to speak, represented in the topical affection." 

Violence and oppression generated various and pe- 
culiar forms of servitude, until nearly all of them 
ended in chattelhood, which many are wont to con- 
sider as a topical affection of certain races and nations. 
Declining Greece and Rome in the past, Russia under 
our own eyes, serve as illustrations. 

" A general disease not unfrequently finds in its localization a 
perpetual focus of derivation, with seeming integrity of the organ- 
ism in other respects." 

So nations infected with slavery, nevertheless had 
brilliant epochs of existence ; and this " seeming in- 
tegrity of the organism" misleads many otherwise 
averse to chattelhood, and makes them indifferent to 
its existence. 

"Where several diseases coexist in an individual, they are in 
part primary, in part secondary and subordinate, although ho- 
mologous to the former." 

So many evils are the lot of human society, but 
almost all of them are secondary and subordinate to 
oppression, violence, and slavery. 



Xll 

" The issue of a local disease in health consists either in the per- 
fect re-establishment of the normal condition, or else in partial 
recovery ; more or fewer important residua and sequelae of the 
disease not incomparable with a tolerably fair state of health, re- 
maining entailed." 

The history of the slow recovery of post-Roman 
Europe from domestic bondage j ustifies the application 
of this pathologic axiom to the social condition of 
nations. 

" Issue in death: 1. Through exhaustion of power and of organic 
matter." 

The history of republican, but above all, of imperial 
Home, demonstrates that its decline and death were 
caused through the extinction of freedom, free labor, 
and the free yeomanry, which in every state consti- 
tutes the power, the organic matte? 1 of a nation. 

" 2. Through the suspended function of organs essential to life, 
through palsy, etc." 

When the laboring classes are enslaved, the life of 
a nation is speedily palsied. 

u 3. Through vitiation of the blood." 

What blood is to the animal organism, sound social 
and political principles are to society. When such 
principles become vitiated, the nation is on the path 
of decline and death. 



Xlll 

" The worst malformation is never so anomalous as not to bear 
the general character of animal life, etc. Even an individual 
organ never departs from its normal character so completely that 
amid even the greatest disfigurement, this character should not 
be cognizable." 

So often the enslaver and the slaveholding com- 
munity may preserve some features of the normal hu- 
man character, notwithstanding the " disfigurement" 
produced. 

" The excessive development of one part determines the im- 
perfect and retarded development of another, and the converse." 

So the oligarchic development retards the growth 
and advancement of the laboring classes, whether the 
hue be white or black : it prevents or retards the cul- 
ture and civilization of individuals and communities. 

" Various and manifold as are the forms of monstrosity, some 
of them recur with such uniformity of type as to constitute a 
regular series." 

History shows that various as are the other social 
monstrosities, domestic slavery always recurred with 
a fatal uniformity of type. 

" The genesis of malformation in the human body is still 
vailed in much obscurity despite some progress made in science." 

Social teratology, or the science of monstrosities, 
easily traces the origin and genesis of domestic sla- 
very. 



XIV 



A conscientious study of the records of bygone 
nations, as well as of the events daily witnessed dur- 
ing a decennium, produced the following pages. 
They complete what I said about slavery a few years 
ago.* As then, so now, I am almost wholly unac- 
quainted with anti-slavery literature in any of its 
manifestations. I diligently sought for information 
in the literary and political productions of pro-slavery 
writers. Beside legislative enactments, political dis- 
cussions, and resolutions by Congress and the legisla- 
tures of the various Slave States, and the messages of 
their respective governors, I read every thing that 
came within my reach, even sermons, heaps of " De 
JVw's Review" and "Fletcher's Studies on Slavery. "f 
Ah; 

For years the rich resources of the Astor Library 
have facilitated my general studies, and the informa- 
tion there sought and found was enhanced by the 
kindest liberality experienced from Dr. Coggswell 
and all his assistants. 

And now let History unfold her records. 

* "America and Europe," chap. X. 

f Among the neutral publications on American slavery, the most 
remarkable and instructive is the work entitled "The Law of Freedom 
and Bondage in the United States, " by John Codman Hurt. 



V 



SLAVERY ffl HISTORY. 



i. 
EGYPTIANS. 



AUTHORITIES : 

Wilkinson, Rosellini, Lepsius, Uhlemann, Renan, Guttschmidt, Bugsch, 
Birch, Be Rouget, Bunsen, etc. 

In the gray twilight of history, the apparition that 
first distinctly presents itself is Egypt — that land of 
wonders, standing on the shores of the " venerable 
mother the Nile." The Egyptians already form a 
fully-elaborated, organic social structure, nay, a pow- 
erful nation, with a rich material and intellectual 
civilization, when as yet the commonly accepted 
chronology begins to write only rudimental numbers. 

It is indifferent (so far as the present investigation 
is concerned) whether this Egyptian culture ascended 
or descended the Nile — whether its cradle was Meroe, 
Elephantis, Syene, or Thebes — or whether it first 
sprang up and expanded around Memphis. So, the 
first conquerors of Egypt may have belonged to the 
1 



Z SLAVERY IN HISTORY, 

Shemitic or to the Aryan stock — they may have en- 
tered from Asia by the Isthmus of Suez, or by the 
Straits of Eab-el-Mandeb and the Red Sea, landing 
first on some spot in Abyssinia or Nubia ; or, perhaps, 
the primitive civilizers of the valley of the Nile were 
autochthones, who were conquered by foreign in- 
vaders. However these things may have been, 
Egyptian civilization and culture clearly bear the im- 
press of indigenous development. 

The founders of the Egyptian civil, social and 
religious polity considered agriculture as the most 
sacred occupation of mortals — transforming the rov- 
ing savage into a civilized man. It was the divine 
Osiris who first taught men the art of tilling the earth, 
if indeed he was not its inventor. But the god forged 
not a fetter for the farmer, and the Egyptian plough 
was not desecrated by the hands of a slave. 

The first rays of history reveal Egypt densely 
covered with farms, villages, and cities, and divided 
into districts (noma), townships, and communes — 
each having its distinct deity, and each most probably 
self-governing, or at least self-administering : all this 
in the earliest epoch, previous to the first dynasties 
of the Pharaohs, and anterior to the division of the 
population into castes. 

The division of a population into castes, however 
destructive it may be to the growth of individuality 
and the highest freedom in man, is neither domestic 
slavery nor chattelhood. These divisions and sub- 
divisions originally consisted simply in training the 



EGYPTIANS. 3 

individuals to special occupations' and functions, and 
so educating them in special ideas ; but not in making 
any one caste the property of any other. The grada- 
tions of caste constituted no form of chattelhood 
whatever. 

The principal castes were the princes, or Pharaohs, 
the priests, the soldiers, and then the merchants, arti- 
ficers, farmers and shepherds ; and each of these, 
again, had numerous subdivisions. Together they 
directed and carried out all the functions, pursuits, 
and industries necessary in a well-organized com- 
munity. 

In the sanctuary of the gods, and before the supreme 
power of the Pharaohs and the law, the priest, the 
military officer or nobleman, the merchant, the artisan, 
the daily laborer, the agriculturist, the shepherd, even 
the swineherd (considered the lowest and most un- 
clean) — all were equal. They formed, so to say, 
circles rather independent than encompassed by each, 
other. All castes had equal civil rights, and the 
same punishments were administered to the criminal 
irrespective of the caste to which he might belong. 
In brief, in the normal social structure of the Egyp- 
tians there existed no class deprived of the social and 
civil rights enjoyed by all others, or looked down 
upon as necessarily degraded or outlawed. The sep- 
aration between one caste and another, moreover, was 
neither absolute nor impassable. 

The ownership of the soil was unequally divided ; 
but it was principally distributed between the sov- 



4 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

ereign, the priests, and the officer-soldiers. The latter 
were obliged, in consideration of the land held, to 
perform military services to the prince — a sort of en- 
feoffment like that which rose out of the chaos that 
succeeded the destruction of the Roman world. 

Peasants, agriculturists, and yeomen, formed the 
bulk of the indigenous Egyptian population. The 
husbandmen either owned their homestead or rented 
the lands from the king, the priesthood, or the mili- 
tary caste ; and they cultivated the generous soil 
either with their own hands or by hired field-laborers ; 
but chattels or domestic slaves were unknown. 

The primary cause of social convulsions and dis- 
turbances is always to be found in some great public 
calamity: such was the celebrated seven years' famine 
during the administration of Joseph, which resulted in 
concentrating in the hands of the Pharaohs numerous 
landed estates, and these principally the farms of the 
poorer yeomanry. But even then, no trace is to be 
discovered in history that any great proportion of the 
agricultural population were enslaved. Their condi- 
tion then became similar, economically and socially, 
to that of the English peasantry during the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries ; and even if it finally 
degenerated into something like the condition of the 
Fellahs, still it was simply political oppression, and 
not chattelhood. The modern Fellahs are serfs, enjoy- 
ing all natural human rights of worship, family and 
property ; and are separated by a wide gulf from the 
chattelism of modern slavery. If, like these Fellahs, 



EGYPTIANS. O 

the ancient Egyptians were forced to Kow before the 
arbitrary power of a sovereign, they at least were not 
the personal property of an owner who had the power 
arbitrarily to dispose of them as his interest or caprice 
might dictate. 

The population constituting the Egyptian nation, 
and included in this graded structure of castes, was 
of varied origin and descent, or, according to a com- 
mon form of statement, belonged to various races. 
But the process of mixing the various ethnic elements 
with each other, went on uninterruptedly during the 
almost countless centuries of the historical existence 
of Egypt, including the epoch of its highest political 
development and the brightest blossom of its culture 
and civilization. In the remotest period of Egyptian 
society, the three superior castes were of a different 
hue of skin from the others, and some ethnologists 
and historians assign them a Shemitic or Japhetic 
{i. e., Aryan) origin. But the optimates were not 
white but red, and so they both considered and called 
themselves. All the other castes — as artists, archi 
tects, merchants, mechanics, operatives, sailors, agr 
culturists and shepherds — undoubtedly belonged to tt 
African or negro stock. 

Egypt teemed with an active industrial populat)/^ 
which furnished countless soldiers to the army during 
long centuries of victory. Egyptian history embraces 
a long period of expansion. Many centuries lay be- 
tween the times of the Rhameses and of ^Techo,. dur- 
ing which the Egyptians conquered Uubia, Libya, 



6 SLAVES Y IN HISTOSY. 

and Syria, and reached Kolchis. These armies could 
not be recruited — and positively were not — from chat- 
tel slaves ; for succeeding chapters will show that it 
was domestic slavery far more than political which 
tore the sinews from the arms of the nations of 
antiquity, and rendered defenceless their states, em- 
pires and republics. If the officers of the Egyptian 
armies were of a red extraction, the rank and file was 
undoubtedly of the negro family. Herodotus says 
that " the Egyptians were black and had short, crisped 
hair," and that " the skulls of the Egyptians were by 
far thicker than those of the Persians — so that they 
could scarcely be broken by a big stone, while a 
Persian skull could be broken by a pebble." Such 
were the elements, with so many, and such varied 
hues of skin, or pigments mixed, which constituted the 
Egyptian people — which formed a society so strong 
and compact that, for more than forty centuries, its 
influence and existence constitute one of the most 
significant phenomena of the antique world. These 
hybrid elements elaborated a civilization called by 
modern ethnologists Cushitic or Chamitic, in contra- 
distinction to the Shemitic and to the Japhetic* (or 
Aryan.) The pre-eminent active elements in this 
civilization were the artists, merchants, and opera- 
tives. It was eminent for mathematical and astronom- 
ical science, for architecture, the mechanic arts, and 
a highly elaborated administration. And this Egyp- 

* The term Japhetic is rather confused and unscientific. It is used 
here as being more popularly intelligible. 



EGYPTIANS. 7 

tian or Chamitic civilization, too, preceded by many ^ 
centuries the Shemitic and Aryan cultures. 

The origin of the denomination Chamites and 
Cushites has long been the subject of numerous ethno- 
logic researches, while comparative philology, which 
has proved itself so potent in the solution of innumer- 
able race-problems, has also been interrogated. The 
question is, by what name did the Egyptians call 
themselves or their land ; and what meaning did they 
attach to such names ? K-M (whence Karri, Kem, 
Kemi, Cham) signifies " the black land ;" though, 
according to Champollion, it implies "the pure land;" 
while others give it the meaning of " the sceptre." 
At any rate, Cham signifies " black" in Egyptian and 
its ancient dialects — those of Thebes and Memphis, 
for instance, as also in the Coptic. Egypt proper was 
called by its inhabitants " the black land" on account 
of the appearance of its soil ; it was black in contra- 
distinction to the red land (or Descher, i. <?., "desert") 
which surrounded the Nile valley. The Hebrews 
borrowed the word from the Egyptians, and trans- 
ferred it from a geographic to an ethnical name — or 
rather, perhaps, this application was made by subse-, 
quent commentators on the Hebrew writings. Neither 
was the denomination Cush (Egyptian Kus, Kes-i-or, 
Kds) used by the Egyptians for their own land or 
people. They employed it, as would appear, to de- 
nominate lands situated south of Egypt proper; for 
the Egyptian viceroys who administrated the govern- 
ment of these lands bore the title of "Sisuten n Kus" 



8 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. • 

or king-sons of Kush. These lands were thickly in- 
habited by black and brown populations. In the 
same way, the Hebrews (or Beni-Israel) used the de- 
nominations Cush and Cushites in a generic sense for 
lands and tribes situated south of them; and the term 
expanded with the peregrinations, forced or voluntary, 
of the Arabs and Jews. First it was applied to lands 
and tribes south of Mesopotamia (Naharaina), the 
birthplace of Heber (Taber) and the Beni-Israel ; 
and when they were in Egypt, either as free or cap- 
tive Hycksos, they applied the term Cush to the region 
of Meroe south of the Nile ; and (according to Jewish 
writers) Sabaa, in southern Arabia, was also inhabited 
by sons of Cush. It would be difficult to determine 
to which language the word primarily belongs, but, 
in all probability, early Shemitic writers transmitted 
it to the ancient Armenians, just as they in turn trans- 
mitted it to western or Christian writers. Herodotus 
used it ; and his Kissia is identical with that of the 
Hebrews and Armenians. The denomination Chute, 
Chuzi, Qossaia, Cussaia, of various dialects of Fore- 
Asia has reference to the tribes of Kuschani, JTusi, 
Cushites. Hence Cushites are to be found in Syria, 
Arabia and Africa. 

In the phonetic character is found the expression 
M-S-R as a designation for that land. It is synony- 
mous with the Arabic Misr, the Jewish Mizraim, 
Mazor, and the Syriac Mezren. Yarious explanations 
are given of this word, according to the significations 
it has in the various dialects. According to some it 



EGYPTIAN?. . 9 

means " stronghold," while according to others, it sig- 
nifies "extension ;" by the Hebrews it was applied to 
Egypt, or, as some commentators assert, to the Egyp- 
tians. 

Other appellations for the land of Egypt are found 
in the hieroglyphs and in phonetic groups. This is 
the case, for instance, with the group Nehi, signifying 
the sycamore, which is believed to be indigenous in 
Eygpt. 

None of these names, however, had any historical 
signification, so that it still remains a mystery what 
the native name for the primitive civilizers of the Nile 
valley was. As for the name Egypt, Egyptians, this 
was bestowed on them by the Greeks ; and some at- 
tempt to deduce it from Phtha or Ptah, a divinity of 
the city and township of Memphis ; and the denom- 
ination, Land of Ptah, is supposed to have been 
used in a generic sense. 

The advantage of thus exploring those historical 
and philological labyrinths will make itself clear in 
succeeding chapters. Philology has explained the 
signification of various other ancient ethnic and na- 
tional names, among others, " Hebrews," " Aryas" or 
" Aryans," "Pelasgi," " Greeks," " Canaanites," etc., 
and such explanations have frequently proved of the 
highest value in letting us into the secret of their 
origin, character, and the direction of their activity. 
But there is no vestige of the antique language of the 
Egyptians that would lead us to suppose that absolute 
distinctions of race, or chattelhood based thereon, 
1* 



10 SLAYEEY IN HISTORY. 

formed features of the primitive life in ,the Nile 
valley. 

From various paintings, inscriptions, and philolog- 
ical data, science has endeavored to reconstruct the 
ethnological conceptions entertained by the Egyptians 
seventeen centuries b. c. The red race occupied s 
Egypt (chiefly lower Egypt), Arabia, and part of 
Babylonia ; the yellow race was spread over Palestine 
and Syria, reaching Africa ; the white race stretched 
north and north-west of Egypt, inhabiting a part of 
Libya and the islands of Rhodes, Cyprus, Crete, etc. ; 
the black and brown race occupied Egypt, Abyssinia, y 
Nubia, and Southern Arabia. Nah es. u or Nah si. u 
was the name given to all negroes or blacks who were 
not Egyptians, while to the whole red-colored race 
they applied the term ret, ret-u, signifying " germ." 

The Egyptian pantheon was of course the creation 
of the superior priests. It made each human race the 
creation of a separate god ; and very probably all the 
numerous elements in the complicated social structure 
of the Egyptians, that is, every caste or function, even 
the lowest, which was still an integral part of the whole, 
had each its separate deity. The creator of the black 
race was either a god represented symbolically by a 
blackbird, or the god H'or (or Horos), son of Osiris, 
and his avenger, who dwelt in the firmament with all 
the other deities. 

The negro physiognomy appears on the Egyptian y 
monuments ; and this not only in the representa- 
tions of common persons, but even in the case of 



EGYPTIANS. 11 

kings, as, for instance, those of the eighteenth and 
nineteenth dynasties, in the statues of Totmes III. and 
Amenophis III. The Egyptian king Sabakos was 
an Ethiopian by birth, and many other Pharaohs 
married black African princesses — iSTah es. u. There * 
can be no doubt of intermarriages having been com- 
mon between red and black -Egyptians proper; and 
through such unions, legal and illegal, it was that the 
brownish rather than entirely black color of the Egyp- 
tian man of the people, as represented on the monu- 
ments, was produced. (A similar slow but uninter- 
rupted transition and modification may be verified at 
the present day and under our own eyes — crisped hair, 
thick skulls,* still prevailing). Finally, eunuchs are - r 
represented of a yellowish hue, perhaps nearer in tint 
to that of the yellow than the black race. 

Some psychologic ethnologists affirm that the Afri- 
can or pure negro is to be considered as constituting 
a passive race, requiring fecundation by an active 
one. If this be the case, then the Egyptians solved 
the question. The red and dominant race drew no 
impassable lines of demarcation by chattelhood ; and 
the black population formed the most vital element 
of the social structure. 

At the threshold of what our limited knowledge 
considers as positive history, therefore, we meet a 
highly developed society and nation, which for long- 
centuries enjoyed a political existence, normal when 

* Herodotus, * 



12 SLAVERY IX HISTORY. 

compared with contemporaneous and surrounding 
nations, and domestic slavery neither lay at the 
basis of the structure, nor formed an integral ele- 
ment of Egyptian life. In the monuments, paint- 
ings, and inscriptions which remain as records and 
reminiscences of Egypt's palmy ages, no traces are 
found in the regular national and domestic economy, 
of agricultural or industrial lahor which could have 
been performed by slaves or chattels. Slaves and 
slavery existed in Egypt, not as an intrinsic and in- 
tegral part of society, but as an unhealthy excrescence 
— not under the sanction of right or law, but as the 
result of a violation of both. Egyptian slavery was 
an atonement for social and personal crime — an abnor- 
mal monstrosity, and not the normal and vital force 
of Egyptian activity. If slavery had been a normal 
social institution, it would have had its deity and its 
rites ; but, as exclusively the result of a disease, it 
was regulated and dealt with as such. 

Egyptian slaves consisted of prisoners of war made 
on the field of battle, or captives taken in forays 
made into neighboring or distant countries. In early 
times, also, all strangers whom accident or tempest 
threw on the shores of Egypt, and who had no 
claims to a legal hospitality, were enslaved ; for, for 
centuries Egypt was closed against the intrusion of 
foreigners — certain merchants and traffickers only 
being specially excepted. Furthermore, conquered 
countries paid their tribute partly in children, who 
thus became slaves. All these slaves were the 



EGYPTIANS. 13 

property of the Pharaohs, who employed them in 
various ways, distributed them to their officials, sold 
them to their subjects of all castes, or to domestic 
and foreign traffickers. But the exportation of slaves 
belongs to a later period — the epoch of Egypt's his- 
torical decay. Slaves were imported, but not exported, 
as there was no special economical slave-breeding for 
this or other purposes. 

It is unnecessary to dwell on the generally known 
fact of the captivity and enslavement of the Jews, 
or to detail the researches concerning the Hycksos — 
first slaves, then masters and rulers, and finally again 
overpowered and reduced to captivity. But beside 
these Shemites, Hebrews — be they Hycksos or not — all 
other races and nations were at some time or other 
captives and slaves in Egypt. The Pharaohs warred 
with Asiatics, and especially with what is now called 
Caucasian races ; and the monuments show that red, 
white, and yellow slaves taken in war were far more 
numerous than the blacks. 

Egyptians condemned for any kind of criminal of- 
fence became slaves, or were condemned to public 
hard labor. As equality before the law prevailed in 
Egypt, a person belonging to the superior caste (red- 
skin) was liable thus to become a slave in his own 
country. Contrary, however, to the custom of almost 
the whole of antiquity, and even of earlier Christian 
times, the Egyptians never reduced debtors to per- 
sonal slavery. A debtor was not personally responsi- 
ble, and could not be sold into slavery by his creditor. 



14 SLAVEKY IN HISTORY. 

Slaves of every kind might be redeemed and manu- 
mitted. They then became equal to other Egyptians, 
as is evidenced by the marriage of Joseph with a 
daughter of a high-priest, and by his eminent official 
position. Children born from Egyptians and their 
slave women, whether red, yellow, black or white, 
were equal in all rights, and shared the inheritance 
with the legitimate offspring of the same father. The 
father transmitted his own status to his children, ac- 
cording to a custom general in the East, and ascend- 
ing to the remotest antiquity. 

Slaves worked in the mines, and were employed on 
every kind of hard labor, but principally, and as far 
as possible, on those great and almost indestructible 
public works and monuments that distinguished the 
cities of the Nile. It was the pride of the Pharaohs 
to be enabled to inscribe on the structure that the 
work was not performed by the hands of Egyptians — 
referring to the hard work, such as carrying blocks, 
raising and preparing material, digging canals, etc. 
All the servants about the palace, sanctuary and villa 
were slaves. They belonged to all races and colors, 
and as such are represented on the monuments. In 
ancient, independent Egypt, therefore, slavery was, in 
the strictest sense, limited to the household. 

Such was Egypt, the most ancient of nations and 
civilizations. In her, slavery was an incidental and 
abnormal condition, and did not enter into the vitals 
of society during the long centuries that this society 
stood foremost among nations and civilizations. In 



EGYPTIANS. 15' 

the last stages of Egyptian Jiistory, however, domes- 
tic slavery did its terrible work, helped by conquests 
by foreigners, by the overthrow of its independence, by 
exactions, tributes, and all kinds of oppressions. Then 
only was it that political slavery, or what is called 
oriental despotism, became altogether fused with do- 
mestic slavery. 

Various are the causes to which the decomposition 
and downfall of Egypt are ascribed. Some assert 
that Egyptian society and civilization, traversing all 
the stages of growth and development, logically end- 
ed in senility, decrepitude and death. Others iind 
in the division into castes, one of the pre-eminent 
causes of the decline of Egypt. But, baneful and 
destructive as is the organization into castes, it is 
a blessing when' compared with domestic slavery. 
The rigid organization of the castes was a counter- 
poison, a check imposed upon the extension of do 
mestic slavery, preventing it from eating up the 
healthy agencies of society. The caste system — and 
above all priestly caste — was, to a great extent, a curb 
on the despotism of the Pharaohs. The castes for 
many centuries prevented the fusion of the two great- 
est social plagues : domestic and political slavery. 

The all-powerful law of analogies — which in the 
course of these pages will be more luminously exhibited 
from the fate of other empires and civilizations — au- 
thorizes already the positive, and even axiomatic as- 
sertion, that the almost unparalleled by long historical 
life of the Egyptians, and the highly advanced state 



16 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

of their civilization, are due exclusively to the fact, 
that domestic slavery and chattelhood remained for a 
long time an abnormal outgrowth. It was not the basis 
of domestic and national economy, not the object fit 
for the special care of the legislator, and was not inter- 
twined with the social, political and intellectual life 
of the Egyptians. 






PHCENICAXS. 17 

II. 

PHCENICIANS. 

AUTHORITIES : 

Moevers, Benan, Dunclcer, Ewdld, Ezekiel, Proverbs of Solomon, etc. 

Pkeviotts to any epoch settled by positive history, 
the Canaanites, or Phoenicians, a highly civilized na- 
tion, dwelt in the land called Palestine. They were 
an elderly branch of the Shemitic family ; their 
generic name embracing the Hittites, Jebusites, 
Amorites, and Girgasites — all of whom the Greeks 
called Phoenicians. Canaan, in the Shemitic dia- 
lects, signifies " lowland," as was Palestine, in contra- 
distinction to Aram, or- the highlands of Mesopotamia 
(Naharajim, Nahirim of the Old Testament). Ca- 
naan, in Hebrew proper, is sometimes synonymous 
with " merchant ;" and the historical development of 
the Phoenicians explains and justifies this significa- 
tion. The Greek name Phoenicians, is supposed by 
some to be derived from phoinizai, " to kill," whence 
Phoinikes (Phoenicians), " bloody men." The Phoe- 
nicians, being very jealous of their maritime trade, 
killed and in every way molested the navigators from 
other lands who dared to follow their vessels or spy 
out their extensive maritime establishments, factories, 
or connections. For this reason the Greeks long con- 
sidered the Tyrrenian seas as highly dangerous for 



18 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

navigators, and as filled with rocks, monsters, and an- 
thropophagi. Other investigators, again, derive the 
Greek word Phoenicians from their ruddy complexion, 
or from their having first navigated the Red Sea. 

The primitive seats of the Phoenicians lay north 
and south of Syria. From thence they are supposed 
to have emigrated to Palestine through the northern 
part of Syria, while another column from the south 
advanced from the delta on the Persian Gulf, anciently 
called Assyrium Stagn,wn y or from the islands of Ty- 
ros (Tylos) and Arados, situated in the above-named 
waters. Some writers suppose that an earthquake 
obliged them to emigrate from these shores of the 
Erythrean or Red Sea (Persian Gulf) of antiquity, 
and that their Greek name owes its origin to this cir- 
cumstance. 

These wanderings through regions already thickly 
inhabited by various tribes and nations, may have 
contributed to develop in these Shemites that power- 
ful mercantile propensity to which they chiefly owe 
their historical immortality ; then and there, too, they 
most probably began the traffic in slaves, to which, if 
they were not its originators, they certainly gave a 
new and powerful impulse. Thus, while the Phoeni- 
cians figure in history as the earliest navigators and 
merchants, they must also be written down in the 
light of having inaugurated, or at least, greatly ex- 
tended the accursed slave-trade. 

!No division into castes seems ever to have existed 
among the Phoenicians. As a general rule, no traces 



PHOENICIANS. 19 

of this social circumscription are to be detected among 
the nations of pure or even of mixed Shemitic stock 
which flourished in Fore- Asia — in Syria, Babylon or 
Assyria. The Phoenician political organism embraced 
lit, the powerful ruling families ; and 2dly, the sub- 
ject classes — a division similar to that of the aristos 
and demos which prevailed in Greece, or to the pa- 
tricians and plebeians of Home. The land of Canaan 
was originally cultivated by freeholders and yeomen. 
When one tribe subdued another, or when the victors 
settled among the vanquished, the latter were not en- 
slaved; they became a kind of tribute-paying colo- 
nists, with limited political privileges, but with full 
civil rights. They were at liberty to hold real and 
personal property of every kind, just as much as the 
ruling tribe or class. So also it was among all the 
Shemites, and, with but few exceptions, among all the 
nations of antiquity. 

Slaves, at this period, were employed only at hard 
labor in the cities and in the household ; they were 
as yet neither farmers, field-laborers, nor mechanics. 
But, as already mentioned, the Phoenicians were the 
great slave-traders, carriers and factors in the remotest 
antiquit} T , and this both by land and sea. At a period 
-of more than fourteen centuries b. a, the Phoenicians 
covered all the shores around the Egean and Mediter- 
ranean seas with their factories, strongholds and colo- 
nial cities. Besides this, they stretched out even to 
the Euxine, while their colonies studded, also, the 
Corinthian and Ionian gulfs (on the sites of mod- 



20 SLAVEKY IN HISTORY. 

ern Patras and Lepanto), and extended on the Atlan- 
tic coast even beyond Gibraltar. The records of the 
earliest wanderings of these Canaanitish tribes into 
Africa, and even Greece, are preserved in legends as 
the migrations of gods, demigods and heroes. 

Thus the Phoenicians linked in a vast commercial 
chain Britain, Iberia (Spain), and India ; while the 
Guadalquiver, the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris and 
the Indus, served as highways for their trading enter- 
prise. From By bios, Tyre, Sidon and other empori- 
ums, they sent out caravans far and wide into Arabia 
and Fore- Asia. The products of their art and indus- 
try were reputed most exquisite even as early as the 
epoch of the Iliad, and they were vain enough to look 
on themselves as the pivots of the world's prosperity, 
and the Scriptures repeatedly mention the pride and de- 
nounce the vices of the Phoenician cities. What their 
merchants bought or received in barter in Asia or in 
Egypt, they exchanged for the rough products of 
Greece, Spain, Albion, Libya, and the lands on the 
Euxine : these consisted principally of grains, hides, 
copper, tin, silver, gold, and indeed all kinds of mar- 
ketable objects. Their central situation for the com- 
merce of the known and almost of the unknown world, 
especially favored the slave-trade. Accordingly Phoe- 
nician slaves became more and more valuable, and a 
continually extending market produced a constantly 
increasing demand. In all probability the inland car- 
avan excursions afforded the principal supplies for 
their immense slave traffic; but they also bought, 



PHOENICIANS. 21 

stole, and kidnapped from evory possible place and 
by every conceivable stratagem — just as modern 
American slave-traders do. In this horrid industry 
they visited every shore. They carried it on among ^ 
the Greeks, among the Barbarians of the Hellespont 
and the Pontus, among the Iberians, Italians, Moors 
and other Africans. Natives of Asia were sold to 
Greece and other European countries, while Syria and 
Egypt were furnished with European slaves. The 
great majority of these slaves belonged to what is 
called the Caucasian race, and negroes constituted a 
comparatively insignificant part. In return for these 
white chattels the Phoenicians bartered the products 
of Egypt and of Fore-Asia. 

The Phoenicians, then, were the great, and, in all 
probability, the exclusive slave-traders of those times. 
The traffic had its chief centre in Byblos, Sidon and 
Tyre — the depots, bazaars, and storehouses of which 
were always glutted with human merchandise. 

In times positively historical, when Phoenicia had 
come to be the mighty and flourishing emporium of 
the world's trade, foreign slaves constituted the im- 
mense majority of the population of her cities — as in- 
deed was the case with most of the commercial cities 
of antiquity ; but none of them were so crowded 
with slaves as were Byblos, Tyre, and Sidon. In 
consequence of this agglomeration, slavery gradu- 
ally crept from the market and the household into 
general industry and agriculture. The slaves thus 
employed by the Phoenicians may be classified as fol- 



22 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

lows : 1. Slaves of luxury, living in the house of the 
master; 2. Slaves employed in various branches of 
manufacture, as weavers, dyers, and artisans of all kinds 
— as also in the manual labors common to every mari 
time and commercial city ; 3. Agricultural slaves. 

This vast accumulation of slaves begat repeated and 
bloody revolts during the whole historic existence of 
Phoenicia. The scanty and comparatively insignifi- 
cant fragments of her history which now exist are 
filled with accounts of such revolts., generally ending 
as most fearful tragedies. An uprising of this kind 
occurred in Tyre about ten centuries b. c. ; and his- 
tory records, that at that time the king, the aristocracy, 
all the masters, and even great numbers of non-slave- 
holding freemen were slaughtered. The women, how- 
ever, were saved and married by the slaves ; and thus 
many primitive oligarchic families entirely disap- 
peared. Frequent servile revolts and insurrections 
of this kind resulted at length in the partial eman- 
cipation of the slaves and their conquest of certain 
civil rights. 

In keeping with the almost boundless accumulation of 
wealth in those cities was the increase in the number of 
slaves. As a consequence, the free laborers, artisans, and 
farmers became impoverished and dispossessed ; and, as 
was natural, they often joined the insurgent bondmen. 
The oligarchs also sent out these poor freemen wher- 
ever Phoenician ships could carry them, or wmerever 
there was a chance of establishing factories, cities, or 
colonies. Such was the common origin of those primi- 



PHOENICIANS. 23 

tive Phoenician settlements, which were scattered 
north and west on almost every shore. In most re- 
gions, even in Libya, their object was simply com- 
mercial and not at all of a conquering character. At ^ 
any rate the newcomers soon intermarried and mixed 
with the natives. 

The slaveholding rulers were now forced to sustain 
a hired soldiery to keep down the slaves — not for de- 
fence against an external but an internal foe. Among 
these hirelings were the Carryians, Lydians, Libyans, 
and Libyo-Phcenicians. To such motley mercenaries 
were they obliged to intrust the security of their 
homes and municipalities. At times this hireling sol- 
diery joined the revolted slaves, and they formed but 
a poor defence against the Egyptians, or against 
Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Alexandrian 
conquest. To all these empires the Phoenician slave- 
holders were obliged to pay tribute, until finally 
Alexander massacred or enslaved them all — slave- </ 
holders and slaves alike. 

Already some of the violent pro-slavery militants 
in the slave section of the United States express their 
purpose to invoke the aid of France in their schemes 
of secession and conquest, and propose that their 
cities and states be occupied by French garrisons. 
What a striking analogy with the course of the fated 
Phoenicians! And if eventually France should listen 
to their humble prayer and send defenders to these 
terrified slave-masters, climatic reasons would induce 
her to furnish such troops as are naturally fitted to 



24 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

bear the tropical heats of the slave-coast — the malari- 
ous regions of Louisiana and South Carolina. Such 
would be her Zouaves and Turcos — the Zouaves ene- 
mies of every kind of slavery, and the Turcos negroes 
themselves. Where then would be their defenders 
and their security? Every French soldier, even if 
neither Zouave nor Turco, would, in all probability, 
side at once with the oppressed against the oppressor. 
The prejudice of race, so prevalent in America, is not 
a European characteristic : it did not exist in antiquity ; 
it does not prevail in Europe now. 

It was not the existence of an oriental political 
despotism in Phoenicia — it was domestic slavery, which, 
penetrating into industry and agriculture, destroyed 
the richest, most enterprising, and most daring com- 
munity of remote antiquity. Cicero wrote their epi- 
taph: " Fallacissimum esse genus Phoznicum, omnia 
monitmentia vetustatis aiaue omnes historia nobis pro- 
diderunty 

When, therefore, positive history slowly rises on the 
limitless horizon of time, Phoenicia appears as an 
ominous illustration of how domestic slavery, from an 
external social monstrosity, tends to become a chronic 
but corrosive disease. And neither does the evidence 
of history end with her. Over and over again will 
it be found that slavery, after eating so deeply into 
the social organism as to become constitutional and 
chronic, has the same ultimate issue, even as a virus 
slowly but surely penetrates from the extremities into 
the vitals of the animal organism. 



PHOENICIANS. 25 

The intermediate stages of such diseases and the 
process of the symptoms are often modified in their 
outward manifestations to such an extent as to lead 
even the keen observer astray. But it is only he who 
can unerringly diagnosticate the nature of the dis- 
ease who can ever become a great healer : he discovers 
the true character and source of the malady, whatever 
may be its external complications, and from whatever 
conditions and influences they may result. Some 
symptoms may increase, others decrease in intensity 
and virulence in the physiological as in the social 
disease — they are, however, secondary. The parallel 
holds good — the principle remaining unchanged : life 
becomes extinct for similar reasons in the animal as 
in the social and political body. 

Thus, in the history of the Phoenicians, and there- 
fore, in the earliest authentic epoch, a great historical 
and social law manifests itself in full action. This 
activity it retains through all the subsequent social 
and political catastrophes in the life of nations and 
empires, down even to Hayti with her immortal Tous- 
saint. Slavery generates bloody struggles. Many of 
these have resulted in the slaves violently regaining 
their liberty, while others have destroyed the whole 
state — swallowing up the slaveholders in their own 
blood, or burying them under the ruins of their own 
social edifice. 



LIBYANS. 27 

in. 

LIBYANS. 

AUTHORITIES : 

Diodorus Siculus, Coiripjpus, Ifcevers, etc. 

The primitive social and intellectual condition of 
the populations dwelling along the shores of Africa 
washed by the Mediterranean sea, can only be inferred 
from their respective relations with the Phoenicians 
and Carthaginians. Other sources of historical infor- 
mation as to that remote period there are none, while 
later times also give comparatively scanty satisfaction. 

Ethnology has not yet positively determined who 
the aborigines of Libya were, and it is questionable 
if it can ever be satisfactorily settled. Egyptian in- 
scriptions indicate a white race in the north-eastern 
corner of Libya, adjoining Egypt; while further to 
the west lived the blacks. At a period exceedingly 
remote, the whites mixed with these negro blacks, 
who probably immigrated from the centre of Africa — 
Soudan — and spread over the whole of Libya. These 
remote epochs, however, altogether refuse chronolog- 
ical limitation. But when chronology, even of the 
most rudimentary kind, becomes possible, history 
shows us the existence, in Libya, of a nomadic and 
agricultural people, who can be no other than these 
cross-breeds, and who had brought a part of the land 
to a high degree of cultivation. The Libyans may 



• 



28 



SLAVERY IK HISTORY. 



thus be considered as an autochthonous African pop- 
ulation — a theory which is confirmed by other evi- 
dence not now necessary to give. 

Among these Libyans — called by the Greeks Afri, 
and bv the Romans, Africani — agriculture was in a 
highly flourishing condition at the epoch of the earli- 
est myths and legends of Greece: all the Hellenic 
legends relating to the distant sea-wanderings of gods 
or heroes, carry them to the Libyan shores about the 
Regio Syrtica — Tripolis. Among these are the Ar- 
gonauts and Heraklides, Perseus, Kadmos, Odysseus, 
and Menalaos. So the Greek myths of Atlas and the 
Garden of the Hesperides have their spring and source 
in that part of Libya. All this presupposes a very 
old culture. Herodotus says that the .zEgis of the 
Greek Pallas originated in Libya, as also that Athene 
here received Gorgona's head for her ^Egis. Even at 
the present day, the chiefs of some of the tribes in 
the southern part of ancient Libya carry the skins of 
leopards and other wild beasts on their shoulders in 
such a way that the head of the animal, ^Egis-like, 
covers their breast. The adventurous Phoenician and 
Greek navigators of the earliest period accordingly 
found the Libyans already a highly cultivated people. 
This culture, too, they possessed previous to their in- 
tercourse with the Canaanites, Phoenicians, or Greeks 
— anterior even to the wanderings of Astarte, Anna, 
or Dido. 

At this epoch the Libyans were possessed of writ- 
ten language. Their alphabet was, in certain peculi- 



LIBYANS. 29 

arities, of an older type than even the Phoenician — 
that father of so ..many eastern and western alphabets. 
Leptis and Oka are Libyan names for Libyan cities 
which were in existence previous to any Phoenician 
colonizations — though these colonizations are them- 
selves anterior to positive history. 

Goats, sheep, and other domestic animals were in- 
troduced into Greece and Italy from Libya ; and 
from thence also came the knowledge of how to breed 
and rear them. The Libyans also, in all probability, 
first taught them the mode of keeping and rearing 
bees, as the Greek word for " wax," keros — Latin, 
cera, is by some deduced from the Berber (Libyan) 
ta-kir, and the Greek designation for honey, meli, mel 
— Latin, mel, from the Berber ta-men-t. Others, how- 
ever, trace both those words to a Sanscrit root. 

As an evidence of their advanced civilization, it 
may be mentioned that the Libyans were highly ac- 
complished in horticulture at a time when the fields 
of Greece and Italy were only rudely ploughed. 
From Libya across the Mediterranean, the legumi- 
nous or pulse plants seem to have been introduced 
into Southern Europe, together with the mode of their 
use and culture ; and some investigators consider that 
the Latin names for " pease" (deer), for "lentils" 
(lens, lentis), and for " beans" (faba), have their origin 
iu the Berber ikiker, ta-linit, and fabua. But to these 
words, also, others give a Sanscrit origin. Cueurbis 
"cucumber," is in Berber eurumb — although, again, 
it is traced, but forcedly, to the Sanscrit. Whatever 



30 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

may be the origin of the words, it is an historical fact 
that the Romans acquired their whole knowledge of 
horticulture from the Libyans and Libyo-Phoeni- 
cians ; and it may even be surmised that the Latin 
wtus, " hortus," had its root in the Berber v/rt. 

Civilization among the Libyans, therefore, was an- 
terior to any contact either with Phoenicians or 
Greeks, and long centuries anterior to the Cartha- 
ginian domination over the northern shores of Africa. 

The Libyans were a nation of agriculturists and 
freeholders. Eo trace of slavery appears among them, 
and, if it existed at all, was altogether insignificant 
and accidental. When the Phoenicians and Canaan- 
itish settlements increased in power and number, the 
Libyans became tributary colonists, and the Phoeni- 
cians instituted the slave-trade among them, whose 
victims were confined mostly to the nomads. 

As we have before said, the poor white colonists 
sent from Canaan and Phoenicia M Libya inter- 
married with the natives ; and from this union 
came the Libyo-Phcenicians of history. The rela- 
tions which the Libyans (and subsequently the 
Libyo-Phoenicians, when again subjugated) held to 
Phoenician and Canaanitish settlers, were similar to 
those which free Romans afterward held to the Lon- 
gobard and Frankish conquerors who settled upon and 
held the lands of which they were once the masters. 



CARTHAGINIANS. 31 

IV. 
CAETHAGINIANS. 

AUTHORITIES I 

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Polybius, Corrippus, Mcevers, etc. 

The Carthaginians were the great ethnic offshoots 
of Phoenicia in the western part of the ancient world. 
It would not be in place here to inquire what motives 
led these~wanderers away from their Asiatic home, or 
what was the nature of the settlement which they 
made. They left Tyre and founded the celebrated 
city of Carthage, on a spot where an ancient colony 
from Sidon previously existed.* Carthage very early 
— indeed, we might almost say, at the start — assumed 
a higher character than any previous colony or city 
of Phoenicia. It soon became, in fact, an indepen- 
dent political power. It began to nourish at a time 
when Tyre and Sidon were on the decline, and when 
these once great cities had become tributary to Asiatic 
potentates. The Carthaginians became first the pro- 
tectors, and soon afterward, the masters of all the 
ancient Phoenician colonies scattered over the western 
world. JSTor did they stop here ; they became a war- 
like and conquering empire. The political misfor- 
tunes of their mother country increased, by almost 
uninterrupted immigration, the number of poor free 
* The name Carthage signifies a " new borough," or "city." 



82 SLAVERY IN HISTOKY. 

citizens in Carthage, as well as in other seacoaet 
cities now Punic, though once Phoenician — many of 
them, indeed, having a numerous Libyo-Phcenician 
population. This surplus the Carthaginians sent off as 
colonists into the interior of Libya, where they found- 
ed smaller cities or settled as agriculturists among the 
native population, whose lands, in many instances, 
were assigned to the new-comers. The Carthaginian 
oligarchy soon began to oppress and look with con- 
y tempt upon the ancient Phoenicians, Libyo-Phoani- 
cians and Libyans. In process of time, the new 
colonists mixed with the ancient populations, and all 
were soon equally sufferers from oppressive tributes 
and exactions. The common hatred of these various 
populations against the oligarchy, which frequently 
led to revolt, was a powerful aid to the Numidian 
kings and to the Romans in their efforts to crush 
haughty Carthage. 

The great Carthaginian oligarchs and slaveholders 
extended and perfected what the Phoenicians perhaps 
only began. They acquired in various ways vast 
landed estates, and oppressed and impoverished the 
tributary colonists and small freeholders by grievous 
exactions ; they seized their homesteads, and finally 
reduced them to serfdom and slavery. Toward the 
decline of Carthaginian power, such estates were 
mostly cultivated by slaves ; and these slaves — those 
in the country as well as those in the cities — were 
either Libyo-Phoenicians and Libyans, or belonged 
to Asiatic and European races — the unhappy individ- 



CARTHAGINIANS. 33 

nais being either bought or taken as prisoners of 
war. The subdued and slave populations were as 
mixed as the Carthaginian armies, which, in Africa 
especially, contained a vast number of negroes — thus 
presenting an antetype of the French Turcos. 

The gigantic struggle of Carthage with Rome de- 
cided the destinies of the world. Carthage fell. But 
the breath of the moribund slave-holding oligarchy 
of Carthage poisoned Rome. The tragic malediction 
of Dido received its fulfilment, though not in the 
precise manner recorded by Virgil in the ^Enead. 

After having conquered Carthage and ISTumidia, 
the Romans distributed among their own colonists 
the immense estates of the Carthaginian slaveholders, 
which, however, had been previously appropriated by 
the Numidian kings. Phoenicians, Libyo-Phceni- 
cians, Libyans and Carthaginians, all now either be- 
came Roman colonists, or else serfs and chattels in 
the villas of their Roman masters. When the Van- 
dals conquered Africa, the Romans in their turn 
shared the fate of all their predecessors, who had in suc- 
cession been reduced to serfdom and domestic slavery, 
the one by the other. In the character of serfs and 
chattels, these various races now cultivated for their 
Vandal masters the lands and farms which once were 
their own. Thus affording an additional illustration 
of the eternal and omnipotent law of retribution and 
compensation. 
2* 



35 



HEBEEWS, OR BENI-ISRAEL. 

AUTHORITIES : 

The Scriptures, Ewald, Renan, Dunclcer, Gessenius, Grotefend, etc. 

The pro-slavery party, pacific as well as militant, 
has long sought to fall back on the Mosaic records for 
the justification of the u sacred" and " patriarchal" 
institution. The historic records throw a bright light 
on the gray dawn of Hebraic life — giving us an in- 
sight into the primitive forms of society, not only of 
the Hebrews, but of the other," and especially the 
Shemitic inhabitants of Syria and of Fore-Asia. And, 
truly enough, servants and slaves are found around 
the tent of the patriarch. 

It has already been mentioned that in times long 
prior to any definite chronology, the regions constitu- 
ting Syria, Palestine and Arabia were inhabited by 
various tribes — some of whom were offshoots from 
one stem and some from another. Of these tribes, 
some had already formed themselves into well-devel- 
oped societies, while others, if they were not absolute- 
ly roving nomads, yet often changed their dwellings 
according to the exigencies of pastoral life. Palestine, 
the final home of the Hebrew, was, in all probability, 
the earliest as well as the chief highway of antiquity 
— especially for the Shemitic and Chamitic races, just 



36 SLAVEKY IN HISTORY. 

as the Caucasus and its slopes are supposed to have 
been the highway for Aryan or Indo-European emi- 
grants, and for Finnic, Altaic, and Mongolian or yel- 
low races. This character it had before the time when 
Terah, Abraham's father, drove his herds from the 
table-lands of Mesopotamia {NaJiaraina) ; and it pre- 
served it under Phoenician as well as under Hebrew 
dominion. Repeatedly did Egyptians, Assyrians and 
Babylonians, as well as Persians, and finally Alexan- 
der and his generals, march through Palestine in their 
invading and conquering expeditions. The important 
part which Palestine played in the early commercial 
history of the world, also, has already been pointed 
out while treating of the Phoenicians. 

The origin first of domestic servitude, and then of 
absolute chattelhood, among the primitive pastoral 
tribes, may be traced to two distinct sources, both of 
them springing from abnormal conditions and events. 
One source was the constant feuds and wars of the 
tribes; the other, individual indolence and shiftless- 
ness. The household of a patriarch, originally 
composed of a family and then of a clan, soon had its 
share of restless as well as indolent dependents. Such 
hangers-on were neither as frugal nor as industrious 
as the patriarch's family, and so enjoyed but small 
consideration ; generally, moreover, they were most 
likely strangers who, through necessity or gratitude, 
adhered to the house and considered themselves an 
integral part of it. But the patriarch had the most 
absolute power over all the members of the family — 



HERREWS, BENI-ISRAEL. 37 

over his wife, his sods and daughters, and all their 
progeny and relations. He could banish them from 
the family and hearth ; he could sell them away to 
others ; he had power of life and death over them all ; 
and such powers, of course, extended over dependents 
and servants. In fact, the patriarch was the supreme 
and only-existing law. His will, and absolute obedi- 
ence thereto, was the only guarantee of order inside 
of the tent, and outside of it also in their relations 
with the tents and clans of other patriarchs. The 
more exclusive and distinct such a family or clan was, 
the more independent it was in all its relations with 
similar social crystallizations; and the more closely 
did the dependents adhere to it for support and pro- 
tection. 

Such was undoubtedly the origin of the domestic 
servitude which appears in the Scriptures with the 
apparition of Abraham as a distinct historical indi- 
viduality. But such servants and dependents being 
a part of the family, were not commonly sold nor 
made an article of merchandise, and were not, strictly 
speaking, chattels, as were prisoners made in feuds or 
wars.* Besides, in the formation of the primitive 
patriarchal household, the domestic, pastoral and ag- 

* The old colonial customs and legal regulations in America, fully 
confirm the above statements. White servants, with or without inden- 
ture, were kept in bondage by their masters, as were other chattels, and 
sometimes, though rarely, these servants were even sold. Without, 
therefore, going back to any European origin, it may be peremptorily 
asserted that it is comparatively a short time since the sires of many 
haughty militant slavery defenders were bondsmen on American soil. 



y 



38 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

ricultural labors were performed by the family — chil- 
dren, grandchildren, etc. ; just as it is in the present 
day in every simple household — -for a simple family 
formed the germ of the tribe and of the retainers 
around the tent of the patriarch. As the family in- 
creased, so did the herds, and so also did the duties to 
be performed. Meanwhile the members of the ex- 
panding family continued to attend to the household 
services — just as is now the case in similar circum- 
stances — without their becoming slaves or chattels for 
all that. The primitive Aryan language (of which 
hereafter) clearly confirms what both reason and anal- 
ogy assert as being an inherent fact in the constitution 
of every family, whatever may be the peculiarities of 
skin or skull, or their other ethnic characteristics. 
Moreover, even according to those opposed to the ab- 
solute unity of the whole human race, the Shemites 
descend from the same common progenitor as the 
Aryas (of whom are we), and this affinity strengthens 
what was said above concerning the similarity of their 
domestic life. 

With the increase of the tribes and families, neigh- 
boring or scattered, increased the degeneracy of the 
dependents, until finally these miserable persons, 
grown to be an excrescence on the primitive Hebrew 
family life, and unable to take care of themselves, 
willingly accepted slavery — at times indeed craved it. 
The same phenomenon, under different modifications, 
and occasioned by various causes, again and again re- 
appears in divers nations and empires, just as the 



89 

same bodily maladies have constantly reproduced 
themselves throughout the countless centuries of hu- 
man existence. And indeed the morale of Noah's 
curse can only be, that servitude, being generated by 
corruption of manhood, was, in its very nature, a dis- 
eased and degraded condition. 

Abraham belonged to a class common to the Arabs, 
Hebrews, and all the Shemitic races — shields or chiefs 
of warlike tribes, who were in the habit of making 
war against each other, carrying off prisoners, and 
even kidnapping on occasion. It was these victims 
chiefly that were the objects of traffic; and this very 
trait is true of the Arab tribes down to the present day. 

The Hebrews, liberated from captivity in Egypt — 
that is, from political slavery, which must never be 
confounded with chattelhood— fought against their 
kinsmen, the Shemitic Canaanites, with a view to 
make themselves a home in a country already thickly 
settled, and in comparatively advanced culture and 
civilization. The Hebrews, poor, energetic, and hard- 
ened by the privations of a long captivity, bore the 
same relation to the nations of Canaan which they 
invaded, as the half-naked, half-starved barbarians 
of a long subsequent epoch bore to the Roman world, 
against which they rushed with the force of doom. 
The invading Israelites, according to the commands 
of Jahveh (Jehovah), carried on wars of extermina- 
tion against the Phoenicians, Philistines, Ammonites, 
Amorites, Moabites, and other inhabitants of south- 
western Syria. Many of these original occupants 



40 SLAVEEY IN HISTORY. 

and cultivators of the land of Canaan fled even to 
Africa, from the exterminating fury of the Jews, led 
by Moses, Aaron, and Joshua. Meanwhile the Jews 
took possession of the conquered and abandoned lands, 
which were divided between the tribes ; and the great 
body of the Hebrews settled on them as agricultur- 
ists and free yeomen. In process of time, under the 
direction and inspiration of Jahveh, the supreme 
Lord of Israel, the body of commandments, regula- 
tions and ceremonials, called the Mosaic law, was 
framed. 

The law of Moses has two prominent divisions — 
first, imperative commands, and second, dispensations. 
In respect of all absolute duties to God, as well as 
domestic and social duties, the law lays down its com- 
mands even to the minutest details, and rigidly con- 
demns their violator. But, on the other hand, taking 
into account human frailty, and the temptations to 
which it is exposed, as also the exigencies and cus- 
toms of life, the law is also full of dispensations. 
This twofold character of the Mosaic law affords its 
antagonists a broad field for assaults on its apparent 
contradictions. The law condemns idolatry, yet Aaron, 
the first high-priest, casts a golden calf for the people 
to worship, while Moses raises a brazen serpent before 
their eyes as a material symbol for their faith. The 
law commands monogamy, but permits and regulates 
concubinage. It prohibits licentiousness, fornication, 
and rape, but overlooks them in certain instances, as, 
for example, after a successful battle or the storming 



41 

of a city, because such crimes are unavoidable when 
the demoniac passions are brought powerfully into 
play. Many other illustrations of this twofold char- 
acter of the Mosaic law might be pointed out. 

But minute and precise though the Mosaic record is 
in its religious and social commands and obligations, 
it nowhere commands the Hebrews, as a religious or 
social duty, to enslave the Canaanitish idolaters 
among whom they lived. Enslavement and chattel- 
hood are nowhere laid down as special duties, nor is 
slavery regarded as forming the corner-stone of the 
Jewish social, civil, and religious structure. Slavery 
is not the subject of the covenant with God or of the 
covenant with man ; neither did the possession of 
slaves confer any political, religious, or social rights. 
All this was left for the deduction of modern theology 
and politics. 

The Mosaic law deals with slavery as with an exist- 
ing evil, and regulates it as an abnormal institution. 
The lawgiver recalls to the memory of the Jews that 
they were themselves captives and bondsmen — an his- 
toric fact to which, as we have already seen, the an- 
cestry of many of the slaveholders in the United 
States, at the present day, furnish a parallel. 

But perhaps Biblical commentators have not drawn 
with sufficient severity the distinction in meaning be- 
tween the Hebrew word for " servant," " attendant," 
etc., and that for an " absolute chattel." Chattelhood, 
in the modern legal and practical application of the 
term, was undoubtedly a rare condition in the time 



42 SLAVEKY IN HISTORY. 

of the patriarchs, and even in the primitive theocratic 
epochs of Beni-Israel. The Hebrew language has four 
words to express the primitive domestic relations of 
the race, and neither of them will admit the meaning 
of positive chattelhood. Probably the oldest is the 
word a'buddah, which occurs in the book of Job, 
whose dialect is considered by modern philologists to 
be far older than the Mosaic scriptures ; the same word 
is also found once only in Genesis (Gessenius Diet.) 
It is a collective noun, and signifies " attendants," 
"laborers," and, according to some exegetes, it also 
signifies an " estate" Such may perhaps be its mean- 
ing in the book of Job, as it occurs after the enumera- 
tion of various movables, such as flocks and herds, 
and may thus, in distinction, convey the idea of real 
property. The logical sequence in such enumerations 
was undoubtedly the same then as it is now — mov- 
ables first in order, then landed property. Another 
Hebrew word for the primitive domestic servant is 
na'ar, but its application seems to have been rather 
limited ; it is mostly employed to designate a " lad- 
servant" or " apprentice." The word most generally, 
used, however, and the one most variously translated 
and explained by lexicographers is- e'bed : it variously 
signifies " subject," " servant," "serf," "slave," "at- 
tendant," " officer," etc. Its application to a " serf" 
or " slave" has perhaps rather a moral or ideal than a 
positive legal or social sense. Thus, when in Genesis 
it is said that " Moses removed the swarms of flies 
from Pharaoh, from his servants (e'bed), and from his 



43 

people," the word e'bed undoubtedly signifies " min- 
isters," " courtiers," " officers," and " servants of the 
court," and not actual serfs or slaves. Common sense 
would surely indicate that chattels could not have 
been mentioned immediately after the great Pharaoh, 
and before his people; and still less likely is it that 
the oriental despotism which reduced all to political 
slaves was unknown in the Egypt of the early Phar- 
aohs. Finally, the word abduh alone may signify a 
" slave" in the strict sense of the term ; it is used by 
Ezra, and belongs to a period of national degradation, 
when both slavery and idolatry flourished in Israel. 

Slavery, however, never became an integral element 
of Hebrew life, nor, during their centuries of glory, 
did its pestilence-breath endanger the national vital- 
ity. The Mosaic record, covering a period of nearly 
one thousand years, never mentions any slave revolt, 
such as so often shook the neighboring and contem- 
poraneous Phoenicians. 

For domestic slaves, the Hebrews procured foreign- 
ers, through traffic or by war ; and such slaves were 
of the same race as the slaves of the Phoenicians and 
other neighboring nations. In the history of the 
Beni-Israel, there are long episodes containing ac- 
counts of wars, principally with tribes belonging to 
the same -Shemi tic family from which the Hebrews 
themselves sprang, and many of the slaves made in 
these wars must have belonged to the nearest cities 
and kingdoms. If these had been so numerous as to 
be employed in large bodies in agricultural labor, un- 



44 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

doubtedly there would have been revolts during the 
absence of their masters on military expeditions, or 
even during times of peace. The absence of any such 
event in the history of the Hebrews, proves that 
domestic slavery was for many long centuries recog- 
nized only as an abnormal institution, and its growth 
circumscribed by jubilees and limitary statutes. 

The regulations prescribing the status of slaves, and 
their general condition, are within the reach of every 
one. Their spirit is mild and beneficent for the bond- 
man ; the duration of his slavery is limited — his treat- 
ment is humane, and the condition not ordinarily 
hereditary. In the times of. the early patriarchs, a 
servant could become the chief of the family — thus 
proving that some commentators have made a strange 
confusion in the interpretation of the above-mentioned 
Hebrew word (e'bed), when they construe it as apply- 
ing to such a system as modern American slavery. A 
servant who was eligible to become the chief of a 
family could not be a chattel, but must necessarily 
have been a member of the clan, with independent 
powers and rights, and at least the proprietorship of 
himself. 

Among the Hebrews, also, a man could voluntarily 
sell himself into slavery ; thus the debtor paid his 
debts with his own body, or with that of his wife or 
child. This custom was almost universal in early 
antiquity, as well as among the Komans and the bar- 
barous Germans. But the Mosaic law appointed a 
regular epoch for the emancipation of all slaves, and 



45 

therefore of debtors among the rest ; and the opera- 
tion of this law it was which made hereditary slavery 
of such comparatively rare occurrence. 

Slaves, therefore, even when bought from the Gen- 
tiles, and therefore considered unclean by the Hebrews, 
or when prisoners taken in war, were not cut off from 
the general law of protection. They enjoyed human 
rights, and some of the civil privileges of the Jewish 
born. E"o absolute distinctions of men can be traced 
in the Mosaic law without perverting its whole moral 
tendency. When a slave received any severe wound 
from his master, he was from thence declared free, 
and the Jewish law punishes with death the sale of a 
freeman into slavery — (a fact, by the way, in striking 
contrast with the great social movement of the mili- 
tant pro-slavery party, whose policy it is to enslave 
both emancipated and free-born). A slave concubine 
could not be sold to strangers — still less her children 
by her master. But if he wished to be rid of her, the 
master- was obliged to find her a husband or another 
master among his relatives or friends. In the old 
colonial times in America, the law inflicted a penalty 
on white servants and bondsmen for mixing with black 
chattels — but what penalty threatened the white mas- 
ters for the same offence? The fact is, the slave- 
breeders of the slave regions continually invoke the 
Bible to justify their doings, and continually violate 
Scriptural regulations. 

The Mosaic law commands : " Thou shalt not de- 
liver unto his master the servant which is escaped 



46 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

from his master unto thee : he shall dwell with thee, 
even among you, in the place which he shall choose 
in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best : thou 
shalt not oppress him." Some modern commentators 
attempt to contract this humane and universal com- 
mand, by arguing that it only applied to Jewish lorn 
servants or slaves ; but sound criticism utterly anni- 
hilates the assumption. On the contrary, the phrase 
" in one of thy gates" is a positive proof that the 
command had in view fugitives of every tribe and 
kingdom. All Gentiles, slaves as well as freemen, 
were considered by the Jews "unclean," and there 
might have been some difficulty in admitting such 
runaways into their houses. But whatever was the 
creed or nationality of the escaped, he found safety 
" in the gates" and from thence could not be " deliv- 
ered unto his master." Difference of religion and 
not of race constituted the paramount distinction be- 
tween the Jew and the Gentile ; if the command, 
therefore, were exclusively applicable to the Jewish 
slave, even then its spirit is violated by the Ameri- 
can fugitive slave act, to uphold which, the Mosaic 
law is blasphemed — for the enslaved race of Christian 
America are of the same faith and baptism as their 
owners. 

With the increase of luxury and corruption under 
the Hebrew kings, kidnapping and the traffic in men 
and women seem to have largely increased. The 
slaves stolen in piratical expeditions among neighbor- 
ing tribes were exported to a distance, while others 



HEBREWS, OR BENI-ISRAEL. 47 

were imported from thence into Judea. But against 
this practice the prophets — those inspired successors 
of the lawgiver of Sinai — thundered terribly. The 
Edomites and other Phoenicians — who seem to have 
been pre-eminently the slave-traders of their time — 
importing slaves from Gaza, which was then a great 
thoroughfare and commercial metropolis, and export- 
ing them to other points, were declared to be the 
most accursed of nations. So now, the modern Edom- 
ites of this continent, who have again revived the 
slave-traffic between Africa and this country, together 
with all who aid, abet, patronize or excuse them, come 
under the curse so often denounced against their ancient 
prototypes. 

Under the kings, also, domestic slavery became 
more extensive, and its influence more fatal. It did 
not yet, however, succeed in devouring the vitals of 
the nation, or wholly destroying the small homesteads 
and the free yeomanry, as it afterward did in Greece, 
and over almost the entire ancient world under re- 
publican and imperial Rome. The epoch of the kings 
is one of moral degradation and effeminacy on the one 
hand, and of disasters and captivities to the Jews 
themselves, on the other. Sensuality and general de- 
pravity nourished rank and wild under the malignant 
influence of domestic slavery. Slavery relaxed the 
ties of family and society among the Jews, as history 
shows it to have done in every place and in all ages 
of its existence — for slavery, sensuality and general 
depravity mutually engender and sustain each other. 



48 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

But in their deepest and most helpless degradation, 
the Jews never sold the offspring of their own per- 
sonal lechery into slavery : this advance on the turpi- 
tude of Hebraic slavery — this outrage on the human- 
ity of the faith we inherit from the Jews — was first 
justified and systematized by the slave states of the 
great Republic of the "West ! In ancient as in Chris- 
tian times, there were doubtless parents who aban- 
doned their legitimate or illegitimate offspring to pub- 
lic mercy, to accident, or to servitude ; but all legisla- 
tors have condemned such inhumanity, and tried, if 
possible, to regulate and soften it. So, deliberate 
selling of one's children may anciently have occurred 
in solitary instances ; but it was always and every- 
where condemned as the sum of all infamies. 

Many of the tutelary regulations for the slaves laid 
down in the law, fell, it is true, into disuse, even as 
other parts of the law were violated by the wayward 
and stiffhecked Israelites. On the advent to power 
of the good Josiah, however, the violated command- 
ments and regulations of Moses, including those con- 
cerning the slaves, were rigidly enforced, and a gen- 
eral reformation inaugurated. 

The increase of wealth, the various modifications 
and changes generated in the organism of society by 
its growth, as also by wars, captivities, changes of 
government, etc., brought forth a new subordinate 
condition in the domestic and civil life of the Hebrews 
— it was that of the client, and belongs to the latter 
epoch of the kings. Theologians of doubtful learn- 



HEBREWS, OR BENI-ISRAEL. 49 

ing, and still more dubious honesty, argue that such 
clients were slaves ; but, in truth, the clients among 
the Hebrews were no more the slaves of their patrons 
than the same class were among the Komans or Gauls. 
The Hebrew client was a subordinate^ but independ- 
ent i he was under the protection of his patron, but 
both were bound by mutual obligations and prescribed 
conditions ; and the property and estate of the patron 
were often under the guardianship of the client. 
Many expressions in the Scriptures, also, bearing on 
the mission of the future Messianic servant of Jahveh, 
mean properly a client, and not a slave or a chattel. 

The old kingdom of Judea was overthrown in wars 
with Assyria and Babylon ; and the Jews were car- 
ried away as captives. These repeated captivities 
chiefly befell the most wealthy and influential part of 
the population. Such captives generally became 
political slaves, that is, were deprived of political, 
though not of religious or civil rights, and were noi 
made domestic slaves or chattels. They became the 
property of the king or of the state ; but were not 
individually subject to be scattered or sold; in fact, 
they became colonists, and lands were assigned them 
in some part of the empire. Thus Tiglath-Palassar 
colonized certain regions north of Nineveh with 
Hebrews ; and Sargon (or Sargina) transplanted others 
to Media. In the Babylonian captivities their con- 
dition was precisely similar : thus, when Cyrus liber- 
ated forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty Jews 
from captivity in Babylon, there were among them 
3 



50 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

only seven thousand three hundred and eighty-seven 
slaves, or abont one-sixth of the whole number. 

Domestic slavery, as, we have seen, made consider- 
able havoc among the Beni-Israel, and its life was 
continually recruited by wars and the consequent ruin 
and impoverishment of the people, as well as by othe? 
causes already pointed out. But down to the last' 
breath of the political and national existence of the 
Jews — to the day of the destruction of Jerusalem and 
the hour of final dispersion — slavery never succeeded 
in wholly destroying the humble homesteads of the 
free rural population — as it did in other nations and 
empires of antiquity : for example, it never extirpated 
the free agricultural yeomanry in Palestine as it after- 
ward did in the Roman world, from the Atlantic to the 
Euphrates. The free population was mostly devoted 
to agriculture, and possessed homesteads ; and these 
small free homesteads were regarded almost as sacred 
— even kings could only by violence seize upon the 
poor man's farm. 

Little Palestine, to the East, swarmed like a beehive 
with people, notwithstanding captivities, calamities, 
and exterminating wars. At the time of David, the 
kingdom of Palestine was about the size of the present 
kingdom of Portugal, and had a population of about 
three million eight hundred thousand. Under Solo- 
mon, his son, fifty-three thousand six hundred foreign- 
born slaves w r orked at the construction of the temple, 
most of whom, probably, were the property of the 
king or of the state — not private chattels. If we al- 



51 

low that the number of Jewish-born slaves of both 
sexes and of all ages was even four times as large 
(which is not at all likely, considering the source and 
means of supply of staves), it will give only two 
hundred and sixty-eight thousand slaves of every type, 
in Judea, or one-fourteenth part of the population.* 

How corrupt soever the law and its regulations be- 
came, both, nevertheless, remained a check upon do- 
mestic slavery. Long previous to the terrible Flavian 
epoch, the Hebrews were thickly scattered over the 
eastern and western world, not as exported slaves, but 
as wanderers and adventurers : there may, indeed, 
have been slaves among them, but such slaves formed 
the minority. Strangers, indeed, they were, but free 
according to then existing municipal limitations. It 
was the surplus of a free population that thus wan- 
dered abroad in search of better fortunes — a phenom- 
enon which is reproduced in the present day by the 
immigration to America of the surplus population 
of various European states. So large was this emi- 
gration that, in the time of Cicero, the Jews, Italians 
and Greeks formed the principal nationalities that 
took part in the tumults of the Roman forum, and on 
one occasion they hooted Cicero while on the rostrum. 
The great and striking fact of the preservation of the 
people of Beni-Israel, and its increase at an epoch 

* Flavius Josephus says, that under the Herods, Judea contained 
double the population established by the census of David. Perhaps this 
account is exaggerated ; but, at any rate, it shows a great and positive 
increase. 



52 SLAVERY m HISTORY. 

when the populations of other countries were slowly 
dying out, is to be attributed solely to the curb which 
the law imposed on domestic slavery, and which it 
partially maintained even in the times of the greatest 
national decay. 

On our knowledge of the internal organism and 
economy of the Hebrews, may be based certain de- 
ductions as to the domestic economy of other contem- 
poraneous nations, especially those of Syria and cer- 
tain parts of west Asia. Lydia, and above all, Baby- 
lon and Assyria are historically known only in the last 
stages of their existence, when political and domestic 
slavery had almost completely fused themselves to- 
gether. For earlier times, the sources of investiga- 
tion are limited, if not altogether wanting, and analo- 
gy alone can guide research. It. is, however, prob- 
able that only the Mosaic law remained to combat 
and regulate serfdom and slavery with moral and 
legal weapons. The Hebrews did not possess, and 
did not transmit to history, any of the products of a 
brilliant civilization or of a refined culture such as 
reaches us in echoes from the antique oriental empires. 
But the Hebrews were, at the same time, endowed 
with certain spiritual impulses, aspirations and ideas, 
far grander than those of any of the surrounding na- 
tions. Material civilization and culture cannot be 
considered as the highest manifestation of man's spirit. 
History presents examples of the development of the 
noblest human impulses to a degree out of all propor- 
tion with the so-called " civilization " of the nation. 






53 

The authority of the Scriptures is invoked as abso- 
lute sanction for the enslavement of one branch of 
the human family; and the theological right to en- 
slave the African is based on the well-known words 
of Noah : " Cursed be Canaan : a servant of servants 
shall he be unto his brethren." The general import 
of these words, however, even in the strictest con- 
struction, has rather a reference to their degradation 
as a caste — exemplified in the case of the swineherds 
among the Egyptians, or the Qudras (Soudras) among 
the Hindus— either of which, however, were chattels 
deprived of human and family rights. 

Modern criticism, guided chiefly by the light of 
comparative philology and ethnology, has established 
beyond any doubt the genuine meaning of the patri- 
archal names of Scripture. Down to Abraham, or at 
the utmost to Terah his father, all those names bear 
an ethnical or geographical signification. Abraham, 
however, is an historical person, and with him positive 
Jewish history opens. 

Moses and the other writers of the book of Genesis 
>were educated among the highly learned and scientific 
Egyptians; and in Palestine they came in contact 
with a highly advanced civilization among the Ca- 
naanites or Phoenicians, Arabians, and Nabatheans, 
who were then in the full tide of life and action. 
From these kindred Shemitic peoples the Hebrews 
learned the use of written characters ; and many of 
the scientific discoveries of these epochs are dimly 
preserved in the Mosaic record, as also the general 



/ 



54 



SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 



outlines of the ethnic knowledge of the age. Moses 
and the other writers did but record the various geo- 
graphic and ethnic names which came to their ears, 
and for this no inspiration was necessary. Modern sci- 
entific criticism, guided by the inductions of reason — 
that grandest product of the hand of God — now infuses 
living spirit into what was for ages a dead and incom- 
prehensible letter. This can be easily elucidated by a 
few examples. The word Ham, or Prez-Cham, has no 
root or meaning in Hebrew or an}>- other Shemitic dia- 
lect ; it was doubtless borrowed from the Egyptians, 
and to Egypt must we go for the solution of its signi- 
fication. Other Biblical names, as, for example, Pber, 
Pheleg or Peleg, Pen or Behu, Semtg and Nahor, 
represent distinct Shemitic tribes, or, as the record 
tropically styles them, kingdoms and states, of Meso- 
potamia (JSTaharaina). Eler, or more properly, Heher 
(whence our " Hebrews"), signifies " the stranger" or 
u a person from the other side," that is, one who came 
from a foreign region. Aram also implies an immi- 
grant from the other side of the Euphrates. So, like- 
wise Misraim (the Misr or M-E. of the Egyptians), 
Cushy Phut and Pud, constituted distinct tribes and 
nations in widely distant regions, and perhaps even 
belonged to different races, according to accepted 
schemes of ethnology. Lud answers to the Libyan 
Lewatah, the Leguatan of the Byzantine writers, and 
the classical Garaman. Phut and Lud belong to 
Africa ; they are brothers of Mizraim, or its nearest 
ethnic relations in the remotest antiquity, or perhaps 



55 

closely allied but independent tribes — as the Scrip- 
tures generally record tribes and states politically and 
geographically independent. Phut and Lud are also 
mentioned as the allied troops of the Egyptians, or of 
the Syrians. Finally Lud (Ludim) descends from 
Mizraim ; so it may be that they were a branch of the 
Egyptian stem, just as the Irish are an offshoot of the 
Gallo-Celtic stock, or the Anglo-Saxons of the Teutonic 
trunk. 

The curse of Noah was hurled against Canacm. The 
philological and ethnic signification of this name has 
already been explained. The Canaanites, although 
themselves but an elder branch of the Shemitic family, 
were the enemies of Beni-Israel, who conquered them 
and drove them from their land and homes. There is 
thus a manifest logic in the writer of this part of Gen- 
esis condemning them to eternal servitude — for it was 
written after the subjugation of the Canaanites. In- 
deed, the same policy of enslavement was pursued by 
almost ail the ancient conquering nations in the flush 
of their victorious battles ; and so, in later times, did 
the Longobards of Italy, the Goths and Franks in 
Gaul and Spain, the Anglo-Saxons in Britain, and the 
Normans in England and Ireland. 

There seems to be no scientific doubt that the cursed 
Canaanites were of the same family and stock as the 
Hebrews. After the most searching and conscien- 
tious investigations in ethnology and philology, it is 
impossible to regard the Canaanites or Phoenicians as 
other than Shemites ; and with this also coincide the 



56 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

Spriptures — their land of Canaan is not in Africa. 
Who the Cushites of antiquity were, has likewise 
been already pointed out. And if, as some have at- 
tempted to prove, the ancient Egyptians were not of 
the African race (according to our modern designa- 
tion), then they were the Chamites, Cushites, etc., of 
Scripture. How, through them, the curse can be 
shown to reach the genuine African, requires an effort 
of casuistry repulsive both to logic and fact — nay, to 
the baldest common sense. Not the dimmest shadow 
of authority can be tortured from the Scriptures for 
the enslavement of the black or negro race. With 
somewhat sounder logic has this curse of Canaan been 
applied, even in Christian times, and among European 
nations, to classes kept in bondage by masters belong- 
ing to the same race. Slavery, indeed, has been the 
common fate, in successive epochs, of all human races 
and families ; and the oppressor has never been want- 
ing in a pious plea. The so-called nobility of the 
mediaeval Christian ages considered the burghers and 
subdued laborers as being of impure and degraded 
blood, and all over Europe they were held to be the 
descendants of Ham. (Some old aristocratic Euro- 
pean families even now consider all who are not 
nobles to be of the degraded caste). According to 
this construction of the Noachic curse, the foul taint 
even now circulates not in the vein of the African 
slave, but in the veins of the tyrants w^ho oppress 
him. Neither the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, 
nor, indeed, any nation of antiquity, considered any 



57 

special race or tribe as absolutely predestined to eter- 
nal bondage. This abominable conception is a putrid 
growth from mental, social and moral decay. Even 
Moses had a black woman for his wife (not his concu- 
bine), and, nevertheless, was admitted to converse 
with Jehovah. 

The present historical investigation aims not at the 
vindication of the African : science and history do \S 
this triumphantly for all honest and intelligent minds. 
These pages have but in view to exhibit the terrific 
havoc and devastation which domestic slavery brings 
on all races, nations and civilizations, and to point out 
the complete analogy of slavery as it existed in the 
past with that which still blasts our country and our 
age. The leprosy of early Egypt, Syria and Judea, 
was the same as that which existed long centuries 
afterward in western Europe ; and so also is it with 
the social leprosy of the ages. And as, in special con- 
ditions, a disease may assume a more deadly intensity, 
no also do social maladies at times show themselves 
with increased virulence. In antiquity, domestic sla- 
very seized hold of all races and all social and civil 
•'•oaditions : it was not exclusively fastened on any 
special race. It may be for this reason that it ate but 
M;uvly into the marrow of the antique civilizations 
JNow modern sophistry attempts to give a divine anr J 
moral sanction to chattel slavery, and bases its justice 
ou the absolute and predestined inferiority of tho 
Hack race. But the natural work of slavery in de- 
stroying manhood, morals and intellect, progresses 
3* 



/ 



58 SLAVERY IN" HISTORY. 

with terrible rapidity in this country, and is here re- 
ceiving its most mournful illustration. 

But what is the testimony of the highest scientific 
generalization on this question of the natural inferior- 
ity of the African? All the authoritative names in 
comparative anatomy and physiology — Owen, Flou- 
rens, Bachman, Muller, Haenle, Pritchard, Wagner, 
"Vogt and Draper, among them — together with men 
of the mental calibre and scientific attainments of 
"William and Alexander von Humboldt — men of 
every variety of scientific theory, and discussing the 
question from every possible stand-point — universally 
deny the existence of any absolute inferiority of the 
negro race, or even any essential difference or line of 
demarcation between the races at all ! The physiolog- 
ical and craniological differences which are so easily 
observed, do not amount to a difference of species ; 
and cerebral physiology makes no essential distinction 
between the brain of a white man — even an Anglo- 
Saxon — and that of a negro. 

Still more groundless are the current assertions 
concerning the mental inferiority of the African race. 
If such an inferiority really exists at the present day, 
it is, at the utmost, but transient and conditional in 
its nature. It can only be such an inferiority as for 
countless centuries characterized the northern races 
in contrast to the southern. While the former roved 
and fought as savages in the wilds and forests, the 
latter were elaborating grand and harmonious civili- 
zations. It is difficult to imagine what would have 



HEBKEWS, BENI-ISRAEL. 59 

been the condition of the Germans — aye, even of the 
Anglo-Saxons — what kind of civilization they would 
have inaugurated — without their Christian, Roman 
and Gallo-Celtic inoculation. If it be urged that cer- 
tain African tribes are less susceptible of culture, or 
less endowed with intellectual qualities and capacities 
than certain white tribes or their offshoots — is it not 
also the case that the offspring from the same parents 
may have widely varying powers, tendencies and 
capacities ; and that diverse tribes and nations spring- 
ing from the same ethnic source, have played very 
different parts in the drama of universal history ? 

In the remotest antiquity, the great Gallo-Celtic 
stem actively influenced the destinies of Europe, and 
a part of Asia ; yet it is only eighty years since the 
historian Pinckerton, speaking of Ireland and the 
Irish — those purest Celtic remains, said : " It is in- 
deed a matter of supreme indifference at what time 
the savages of a continent peopled a neighboring 
island" (Ireland). This remark it would be difficult 
to justify — although there are even now many English- 
men who consider the genuine Irish an inferior race, 
and one, too, incapable of any high development. 

The moral and mental growth of those Africans 
who were formerly slaves in the British West Indies, 
shows the possibility of negro culture under the in- 
fluence of freedom. The official reports of the various 
governors of these islands, show that, since emancipa- 
tion, there has been a rapid and steady growth of 
their prosperity; and the absolute veracity which 



60 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

characterizes these reports of English agents to their 
government cannot for a moment be donbted. In 
some of the islands, such as Nassau and others, the 
products and revenues have increased a hundred-fold, 
while the cost of administration (for keeping protec- 
tive fleets and repressive soldiery, needed now no 
more) has greatly diminished. They also certify to 
a great increase in the imports from England — their 
mother country in the noblest sense of the word. 
Even the export of sugar is nearly equal to what it 
was under the forced labor of slavery, while its in- 
trinsic production has vastly increased — the domestic 
consumption far surpassing what it was in the palm- 
iest days of the planters. These are facts which only 
hypocrisy can pervert, or perversion conceal. 

With reference also to the question of the "viability" 
and longevity of hybrids, mulattoes, etc., science pro- 
tests against the fallacy which the new pro-slavery 
apostles advocate. Facts confirm the deductions of 
genuine science, and explode the fallacies of its coun- 
terfeit. The Dominican Republic is almost entirely 
composed of a mulatto population, which is now in its 
second or third generation, if not older. Neither are 
these mulattoes dying out, but they are increasing by 
and within themselves. ~No human white stallions 
are imported there from slave-breeding regions to cor- 
rect or keep up the breed. 

If, however, there should still linger a presump- 
tion of the superiority of the white over the black 
man, it must speedily vanish when the arguments 



61 

ments of the militant upholders of slavery — whether 
they be in senatorial togas, in priestly robes, or in 
printer's ink — are subjected to the analysis of impar- 
tial philosophy or common logic. A spurious and 
depraved civilization is far more dangerous and de- 
grading to society, and more truly evidences positive 
mental inferiority, than does the absence of civilization 
or the primitive savage condition. And this is the 
more true when the subjects of such a spurious civi- 
lization have within reach the elements of a genuine 
moral and social culture, but at the same time spurn 
and depreciate them all. Such persons, whatever 
may be their conventional position or ethnic descent, 
whatever the color of their skin, the form of their 
skull, or the nature of their hair, are singly and col- 
lectively inferior to the uncultivated and oppressed 
and hence degraded negro ; while in respect of jus- 
tice, manhood, and all that is ennobling, they make 
no approach to the millions of industrious and intel- 
ligent farmers and free yeomanry, artisans, and me- 
chanics of the free states, still less with the higher 
manifestations of these qualities in great and generous 
minds. 

Neither in the Mosaic record, therefore, nor the na- 
tive sense of morality, still less in science, can any 
support be found for the fallacies propounded by the 
apostles of American slavery. Science, just and ele- 
vated in its intrinsic nature, deduces conclusions and 
establishes laws with sublime impartiality, extenuat- 
ing naught, and setting down naught in malice. The 



62 SLAVEEY IN HISTORY. 

normal character of every science, always and forever, 
is emancipatory. Science emancipates the mind from 
prejudices, falsehoods, and superstitions, and from the 
tyranny exercised over man by the elements and forces 
of nature, as well as from the far more malignant forces 
of social oppression. It is doubtless this divine char- 
acter of true science which makes it so repulsive to the 
apostles of human degradation. 



NABATHEANS. .63 

VI. 

NABATHEA1STS. 

AUTHORITIES : 

Lassen, Quatremere, Laborde, Oppert, Chwolsohn, Perceval, etc. 

In the gray morning of time, behind the obscurity 
hovering over the origin of Assyria, and preceding 
even the first great epoch of Babylon, dawns the fully- 
developed Nabathean civilization. In proportion as 
scientific investigation imagines it has reached a posi- 
tive epoch in the ethnology and history of our race, a 
new cloud ever rises behind it, which is but of this 
service — unerringly to indicate the limits of the space 
already investigated. Thus legends, traditions, and 
tracings sink helpless and hopeless into mythus, and 
the investigator is lost in the " dark backward and 
abysm of time." The Eastern legends hanging over 
Fore- Asia (or the lands between the Himalayas and 
Assyria), present traditions of epochs and civilizations 
which had traversed the periods of youth, maturity, 
and decline, before Brahmins, Assyrians, or Hebrews 
even dawned on the historical horizon. 

The Nabatheans are supposed to have been Shem- 
ites or pure Chaldeans.* They dwelt in ancient Mes- 

* In contradistinction to Aryanized Sheraites or Chaldeans, known 
as Assyrians and Babylonians of the second epoch, and modern Kurdea. 



64 'SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

opotamia, between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and 
also in what afterward constituted a part of Syria 
and Ass} T ria ; and their branches or colonies extended 
to Arabia and to eastern Mesopotamia. They were 
probably the primitive white dwellers in these regions, 
and the founders of Babylon and of her first — almost 
pre-historic — epoch of glory, down to the time when 
they were conquered by the Assyrians or by Aryan- 
ized Nabatheans and Chaldeans. 

According to ancient eastern writers, they invented 
and taught to their neighbors the art of tilling the 
soil, and from this circumstance they are said to have 
derived their name. At all events they were the 
primitive cultivators of these lands, and agriculture 
seems to have been their principal pursuit and mode 
of livelihood. This highly-flourishing Nabathean civ- 
Ethnology and comparative philology everywhere discover similar bi- 
furcations almost at the sources of ethnic life. These bifurcations are 
explained by natural growth and by the fusion of various tribes and 
nations. Thus Baktrya, Persia and Media present us with Aryas and 
Indo-Scythes or Aryanized Tartars. So, too, all primitive races divide 
and subdivide in the same manner within themselves. The Shemites 
divided into Chaldeans and Canaanites, and then into Arabs, Hebrews, 
etc. The Aryas divided first into two groups — the eastern, from which, 
in turn, sprang the Zend and Sanscrit-speaking Aryas or Iranians and 
Hindus — and the western group, ancestors of the various European 
races. Of these latter, one branch immigrated into Greece and Italy, 
there giving rise again to Ionians and Dorians, Italiots and Latins, and 
the Greek and Latin languages; while another formed the Gaels or 
Gadheals and Kimri, the Gadhealic and the Brizonec being the principal 
dialects. Then we have their offshoots — as Belgae, Kimbro-Belgse, Fin- 
nic-Belgas, etc. So also the Slavic stem, split into Serb, Wendish, etc. 



NABATHEANS. 65 

ilization underlaid the Assyrian and second Babylo- 
nian civilizations, and powerfully influenced the prim- 
itive Hebrew writers. Arphaxad, mentioned in Gen- 
esis, signifies in Chaldaic, stronghold, city, civilization, 
and this, too, at the earliest so-called patriarchal epoch. 
To the Nabatheans belongs the great work of irrigat- 
ing Euphratia, by which these heretofore barren and 
uncultivated plains were made, for more than forty 
centuries, the most fertile region of the ancient world. 
It is asserted, too, by the oldest authorities, that their 
language was highly developed at a time wdien the 
other Shemitic tribes and nations only lisped their 
rude tongue, or attempted to spell the symbols in- 
vented, in all probability, by the Nabatheans. Some 
attribute to them the invention of the arrow-headed 
characters, while others suppose that the Assyrians 
(of whom hereafter), first devised, them, or at all 
events, first applied this Tartar invention for the use 
and preservation of the Nabathean language. Frag- 
ments from the writings of Kouthai — a JSfabathean, 
who lived long before the destruction of Nineveh — 
show that most of the sciences, such as mathematics, 
astronomy, chronology, etc., were cultivated by them 
to a high degree, and that they were great lovers of 
music and other fine arts. 

Their historical records are far richer and more com- 
plete than any other existing records which relate to 
those distant and as yet all but incomprehensible 
epochs and events. In these relics many details of 
the early life of that time are embodied, principally 



66 SLAYBKY IN" HISTORY. 

relating, however, to agriculture, and from which, 
doubtless, the Greek writers, as Dionysius of Iialicar- 
nassus, and Strabo, derived their knowledge of the 
superiority and paramount importance of Nabathean 
agricultural science, on which, as already remarked, 
their whole civilization was based. Nowhere, how- 
ever, in these venerable Nabathean fragments is slav- 
ery or the slave ever mentioned, and still less as consti- 
tuting the basis of domestic husbandry and field labor; 
but freemen said freeholders only are alluded to as cul- 
tivating the land and reaping the rewards of their 
toil ; thus furnishing an additional and most forcible 
] 'roof that human slavery is not coeval with the exist- 
ence of society. 

Indeed, it may be stated as a general rule, clearly 
confirmed by history, that agriculture never can 
flourish under slave labor, nor even under villanage. 
It never did so in antiquity and it never has done so 
in modern times. In proportion as Egypt, Syria and 
Assyria fell a prey to political servitude and her twin- 
sister, or rather generator, domestic slavery, did their 
agriculture deteriorate and decay. In proportion as 
the nations of modern Europe have emerged from 
slavery and serfdom, has agriculture become a civiliz- 
ing agency, progressive, rational and scientific. Eng- 
land, Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium and 
Flanders, are living witnesses thereof; and, on the 
other side, Poland, Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and 
the Danubian Principalities — all possessed of the 
most fertile soils — scarce emerge from social, political 



NABATflEANS. 67 

and rural barbarity. The Moors and the Moriscoes 
were not slaves when they cultivated Andalusia in a 
manner never equalled. And what a wide difference 
between the agriculture of the free and slave sections 
of the United States ! and that too, though the region 
of slave culture enjoys advantages both in climate 
and soil. The halting and uncertain advances made 
in the slave country, are but dimly breaking rays from 
the free, enlightened northern states. 

Thus do the oldest and the newest teach one lesson 
and tend to one result. 



ASSYBIANS AND BABYLONIANS. 69 

VII. 
ASSYKIANS AND BABYLONIANS. 

AUTHOEITIES : 

Rawlinson, Duncker, Oppert, If. von Niebuhr, etc. 

The mighty empire of the Assyrians, which consti- 
tutes one of the first links in the chain of positive 
history, has hitherto been best known by the great 
catastrophes which finally closed its existence. The 
Hebrew Scriptures testify to the wealth, the luxury, 
and the military power of the Assyrians; but neither 
these nor the fragments in other ancient historical 
writers, dispel the obscurity enveloping the interior 
organism of that great antique people. Neither do 
the outlines of Babylonian history given by Herodo- 
tus afford much insight into the details of her social 
structure. 

In that fore- world which history has not yet pene- 
trated, the region between the Mediterranean sea and 
the head-waters and affluents of the Euphrates and 
the Tigris, formed the theatre of a tumultuous confu- 
sion of races, nations and civilizations, which has no 
parallel in the known history of mankind. Social 
and ethnic structures of the most heterogeneous kind 
covered those regions, with their various creeds, 
theocracies, municipalities monarchies and despotisms 
of every degree. 



TO SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

When, about fifteen centuries b. c, history unveils 
the empire of the Assyrians or Ninevites, their do- 
minion extended in a direct line from the head-waters 
of the Euphrates and Tigris to the mouths of those 
rivers ; on the north-east, also, they ruled over Media 
(thus touching the Caspian), and from thence thei? 
dominion stretched across Armenia, southern Cau- 
casus and Georgia, westward to the mouth of the 
river Halys (the modern Kizil-Ermak), in the Black 
Sea, and embraced also Palestine, Phoenicia and 
Kilikia. As the dynasty of Ninus once ruled over 
Lydia, it is probable that the Ninevite empire at one 
time extended over at least a part of Asia Minor, as 
far as the Egean Sea. 

This great Assyrian empire rose on the ruins of 
Babylon, which w T as once her master, and which was 
also far superior to her in antiquity. 

History has preserved the names of some of the 
races and tribes which may here at one time have 
dwelt side by side, but which were subsequently con- 
quered and ruled by the more powerful nation. His- 
tory, we say, has preserved some, and comparative 
philology is constantly disentangling others from the 
chaos of antique Mesopotamian ethnology.* 



* The philological analysis of the arrow-headed characters and in- 
scriptions discovered in the ruins of Nineveh (Khorsabad) and of Baby- 
lon, and on various other spots of the ancient Persian empire, give u.i 
some idea of the various ethnic elements which composed the Assyrian 
and Babylonian empires. Probability, founded on comparative philolo- 
gy, attributes the invention of the arrow-headed characters to a Tartar 



ASSYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS. 71 

The Assyrian and Babylonian empires stand recorded 
in the history of humanity as having been the cradles 
of Eastern despotism and political slavery. How thi 
terrible tyranny arose in Assyria there are no mean 
of ascertaining. Doubtless there were a number of 
conspiring causes, just as many rills unite to form 
powerful stream. In the history of Rome, fortunately 
we shall be able clearly to seize the genesis of her des- 
potism, and exhibit the germ as well as the wreck of 
lier social structure. Reasoning from all historic an- 
alogy, however, it may safely be asserted that Ass} 7 r- 
ian despotism was generated by war, while political 
bondage nursed and fostered domestic chattelhood. 
Evil ever reproducing its own substance and shadow! 

The social and domestic economy of the Assyrians 
must, in its general features, have been similar to that 
of the Nabatheans and Hebrews. In the course of 

(Scythic) people or race. Transmitted, in all likelihood, from people to 
people; increased, fused in usage and application by various languages 
and dialects, these cuneiform characters — as used for Assyrian, Babylo- 
nian and Persian inscriptions — are now ethnically and philologically clas- 
sified into two main divisions — the Anaryan and the Aryan. The Aryan 
comprises the Old Persian ; the Anaryan of the Ninevite relics is the 
result of thirteen ethnic and philologic combinations, and was used by 
the five following peoples, all known to history. 1. Medo-Scythians 
2. Casdo-Scythians ; 3. Susians ; 4. Ancient Armenians ; 5. Assyrians 
The following are the thirteen combinations: 1. Pure hieroglyphs; 
2. Hieratic signs — neither yet arrow-headed ; 3. Old Scythic or Tartar 
arrow-heads; 4. New Tartar (new under Assyria); 5. Old Susian 
6. New Susian; 7. Old Armenian; 8. New Armenian; 9. Old Assyrian; 
10. New Assyrian ; 11. Old Babylonian; 12. New Babylonian; 13. De- 
motic Babylonian. — Oppert 



72 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

time, domestic slavery may, to some extent, have been 
developed in both empires ' s but even in the last stages 
of their independent existence, it could not have 
reached that terrible point it attained after the loss of 
their autonomy. Assyria and Babylon fell by the 
blows of nations who were themselves subdued and 
politically enslaved. To the last, however, neither 
their lands nor cities were ever devastated or desolated. 
Their civilization remained in a flourishing condition 
to the last, and historically it stands as original. But 
original civilizations are never germinated under the 
influence of domestic chattelhood. The plains of the 
Euphrates must have been the hive of a rural popu- 
lation whence the imperial armies were supplied, and 
these supplies could not have been in the form of 
chattels. In ancient cities, manufactures and indus- 
try were often carried on by slaves ; but when domes- 
tic slavery established itself in the rural regions, the 
national forces soon became palsied. 

The tribes and countries conquered by Assyria and 
Babylon were simply made tributary to their wealth 
and power. Prisoners of war were, in all likelihood, 
disposed of in the same manner as they were in 
Egypt, and as was the custom all over the ancient 
world, and indeed, for several centuries in Christen- 
dom — employed in the public works, in the cutting 
of those canals whose traces are still visible, or in 
raising walls, palaces and public edifices, all of which 
are now covered mountain high with the dust of 
ages. Thus Sargon (or Sargina), for example, employ- 



ASSYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS. 73 

ed prisoners of war in constructing the vast palaces 
of Khorsabad. 

Assyrian and Babylonian history records repeated 
transportations of whole populations from one part of 
the empire to another. The condition of such cap- 
tives on becoming colonists has already been explain- 
ed in the section upon the " Hebrews." It would 
seem that the kings of Assyria and Babylon first 
inaugurated this mode of wholesale transportation, 
captivity and colonization. Thus, Tiglath-Palassar 
deported the inhabitants of Damascus to Kur in 
Georgia; and Assardan sent off, en masse, Baby- 
lonians, Arkeans, Susianians, Elamites, Persians and 
Daheans (Tartars), some north and others south. All 
such transplantments begot destruction, desolation 
and the breaking up of homesteads ; and thus fostered 
domestic slavery, facilitated its expansion, and in- 
creased its fatal influence over both the conquered 
and the conquerors. And finally, they prepared the 
soil for that poisonously luxuriant growth of slavery 
by which Mesopotamians and Syrians became the 
general bondmen of classical antiquity. 

After the destruction of the Assyrian capital (Nin- 
eveh) by the revolted nations, Babylon became the 
centre of a new empire. The rule of Nabukudrussur 
(a Chaldean from Babylon), extended from the moun- 
tains of Armenia to the Arabian shores of the Red 
Sea, and to the Persian Gulf. This again is a record 
of perpetual war, and was, in all respects, a continua- 
tion of the Ninevitian period of desolation and cap- 
4 



74 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

tivity. Prisoners of war again filled the capital, and 
worked at the walls and palaces of Babylon. The 
rich valleys were no longer cultivated by free laborers, 
but were in the hands of large slaveholders, and tilled 
by their gangs of slaves. 

Babylon fell, destroyed by war, combined with po- 
litical and domestic slaveries, and she transmitted both 
diseases to her destroyers. 



MEDES AND PERSIANS. 75 

via. 

MEDES AND PEKSIANS. 

AUTHORITIES : 

Zend Avesta, Vendidad, Herodotus, Lassen, Pidet, JDuncJcer, etc. 

The Medes and Persians, or Zend-speaking Iranians, 
those destroyers of the Assyrian and Babylonian 
empires, were a mighty branch of the great family 
of Aryas. The Iranians left the common home of 
the Aryas at a period so distant as to render useless 
every effort toward giving it possible or even prob- 
able chronology. They settled in regions called by 
them " Lands of Iran," which, up to the present day, 
constitute Persia. Some investigators assert that Iran- 
Persia was previously occupied by Tartars ; but the 
earliest traditions preserved in the Zend, or ancient 
speech of Zarathustra, do not mention any struggles 
for supremacy between the races as having taken 
place. 

The Zend Avesta, the oldest traditional record of 
the people of Iran, presents a picture of the primitive 
migrations and the social condition of the Iranians. 
It exhibits them as divided into three classes — priests, 
soldiers and farmers ; though, as yet, there was no 
such thing as the circumscription of caste. It would 
seem that the fusion with the Tartars — the supposed 
aborigines of Iran — was complete, as the Zend Avesta 



76 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

makes no mention of any subjugated people or lower 
class. The warriors and the agriculturists stood on a 
perfect social equality. The book of tradition no- 
where mentions serfdom, slavery, or property in man. 
This would seem to authorize the conclusion that 
among the early Iranians, property in man was un- 
known. Certainly, at all events, if even the forms of 
slavery were present, they were in such abeyance as 
to escape the attention of Zarathustra (Zoroaster), the 
great moralist and lawgiver of his people, who lived 
long after the epoch of the early wanderings, and 
when the Iranic nation formed a well-organized 
society on Iran's soil. Zarathustra considers agricul- 
ture as morally and socially the noblest human occu- 
pation ; but he speaks of the generous labor of free- 
men, not the forced drudgery of slaves. 

The Yendidad contains frequent allusions to the 
general occupations of life, and is especially minute 
regarding the details of husbandry — its wants, modes, 
products and implements. The farmer is to have at 
least a team of draught cattle, a harness and a whip ; 
a plough, a hand-mill, and so forth ; but there is no 
mention whatever of a slave as an agricultural re- 
quisite. The homestead of an Iranian consists of a 
habitation, a storehouse, a cellar, stables for horses, 
camels and cattle ; but the records have no allusion to 
a cabin for the slaves. The Yendidad also describes 
how dogs — almost sacred to the Iranians — are to be 
posted to watch over the village and the herds ; but 
nowhere says that they were to be used for watching 



MEDES AND PERSIANS. 77 

and hunting slaves. Various operatives and artisans 
are enumerated, but none of them as bond-servants or 
as working under compulsion. 

The farmers, peasants and operatives of Media and 
Persia — so admired even by Xenophon and Plato — 
thus built up a vigorous state and society. After long 
centuries of existence, however, its strength was un- 
dermined by foreign conquests, by luxury, and by 
political and domestic slavery. A similar phenome- 
non will present itself again and again in the course 
of this investigation. When the Medes overthrew 
the Assyrian empire, they became infected with the 
dissolute customs of their former masters. The houses 
of the wealthier were filled with domestic slaves ; 
though, as yet, slavery did not come in contact with 
agriculture or the industrial pursuits, and so spread 
like a blight over the land. 

Domestic slavery, in the limited sense of household 
servitude, was doubtless ultimately introduced into 
Persia ; but never was Persian held as chattel on his 
ancestral soil. JSTor yet did despotism, or political 
slavery, exist in the governmental structure of the 
Iranians, who, led by Kyros (Cyrus), conquered the 
whole western Asiatic world. Kyros was only the 
first among his peers, and was all-powerful only as a 
leader and commander. He had not yet the despotic 
power of Xerxes and other and later scions of the 
Aehaemenides ; and to the last, even to the conquests 
by Alexander, the Iranic social structure was compar- 
atively free from domestic slavery. Nor were the 



78 SLAVEEY IN HISTORY. 

Persians and other Iranian tribes ever the absolute 
political slaves of their own kings. 

The Persian conquerors of the Asiatic world found 
domestic slavery more or less developed wherever 
they penetrated. Positive information, however, is 
extremely scanty regarding the special social and po- 
litical organization of the Persians after Kyros and 
under Dareios. The rule of the Achsemenides extend- 
ed over about eighty millions of men, belonging to 
various races. The conquerors, in all cases, respected 
the civil and social organization and administration 
peculiar to the subjugated tribes or nations. In nu- 
merous instances, the sovereigns of conquered states 
became Persian satraps over lands they once ruled in 
their own right. As satraps they were possessed of 
oppressive authority, had the power of life and death, 
of forcing exactions and levying taxes. But, as the 
Persian kings were, to the last, strict observers of 
Zarathustra's precepts, agriculture always continued 
to be the most favored pursuit. The satraps were re- 
warded with strict reference to the degree in which 
agriculture flourished and the population grew and 
prospered in their respective satrapies. 

During the long rule of the descendants of Dareios, 
comparative peace prevailed in the interior of the 
great empire, which swept from theMle almost to the . 
Indus. So that domestic slavery did not find its usual 
supplies from prisoners of war, or by the destruction 
of small properties and consequent domestic impov- 
erishment — those terrible sequels of wars from which 






MEDES AND PERSIANS. 79 

Fore-Asia had suffered almost uninterruptedly for 
many previous centuries. 

For these and other reasons, domestic slavery under 
the Persian rule, although sheltered by political ser- 
vitude, had but small growth and made but slow 
progress. It certainly did not desolate the lands with 
the blight and barrenness that afterward depopulated 
them under Eoman rule. 

The tribute paid by the subdued nations to the 
Persian kings and their court, included slaves — boys 
and girls — but in a limited number. The slave-traffic 
existed as of old ; but, in all probability, the supply 
of the human merchandise was less plentiful. From 
political slaves, but not domestic chattels, it was that 
the armies were recruited which crossed the Helles- 
pont and invaded Greece. 

But, viewing the matter in the gross and scope of 
historical development, political slavery and the blight- 
ing effects of the oppressive despotism to which the 
Persians were long subjected, may be looked upon as 
the soil out of which grew the morbid and monstrous 
system of domestic slavery, just as external influ- 
ences frequently develop and foster the germs of a 
chronic and fatal bodily disease. 



ARYAS — HINDUS. 81 

IX. 
ARYAS— HINDUS. 

AUTHORITIES : 

Lassen, Wilson, Weber, Max Mutter, Pictet, Kuhn, etc. 

The central region of Baktria was in all probabil- 
ity the cradle of the Aryas, the common progenitors 
of all the races and nations which now cover Europe. 
In times anterior to the great pre-historic division and 
separation of the Aryan races, they probably occupied 
the whole of the vast region stretching from the Hin- 
du-Kush, the Belourtagh, to the river Oxus and the 
Caspian Sea. This, too, at a period of which it can 
only be said that time existed. 

The antique Aryas led a pastoral life. The original 
signification of the words in the European languages 
denoting family and social relations, as well as the 
names of domestic and other animals, of grains and 
plants, of implements of husbandry and handicraft 
and the like, is elucidated by roots found in Sanscrit, 
which is supposed to have been the original language 
of the Aryas, or, at any rate, the one which most 
completely preserved the primitive impress of the 
Aryan character. 

" Father " (in Sanscrit, pitri), signifies " the protect- 
ing one, or the protector;" "mother" (Sanscrit, matri), 

" she who regulates or sets in order ;" " daughter" 
4> 



82 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

(duhitri), " the milking one ;" " son" (sunn), " the be- 
gotten ;" " sister" (vastri), " she who takes care," — 
subauditur, of household matters — also, "the bearer 
of a new family ;" " brother" (brhatri), " the helper, 
or carrier ;" " youth" (yavan), " the defender. So also, 
" horse" (agva), signifies " swift, rapid ;'** the name for 
the " bovine " genus, bull and cow (Sc, go, gaus), 
" to sound inarticulately," likewise (ukshan) " fecund- 
ating," besides other names with other significations; 
the " ovine " genus, or sheep kind (avi), implies u the 
loved, protected," etc. ; the " dog " (cvan, kvan), 
means " the yelper, barker ;" but he has also other 
names denoting his qualities, as sucaka, " spy, in- 
former," Jcrtagna, the "recognizing," or "grateful 
one," etc. ; " goose," (hansa, from Sc. has), ' ' to 
laugh."" So the roots for the general names of 
grains and fruits are to be found in the Sanscrit; 
thus, ad, " to eat ;" adas, " nourishment ;" gr, " to de- 
vour," whence garitra, "grain," "rice," etc. It may 
be noticed that derivatives from these and other roots 
became applied, in branch languages, to various spe- 
cial kinds of grain ; thus, " oats," both in form and 
signification, is easily traced to a Sanscrit root. So, 
too, the names of many metals, trees, plants and wild 
animals, have their roots and descriptive meaning in 
the Aryan or Sanscrit language ; and comparative 

* The Sanscrit has about one hundred and forty appellations for tho 
"horse" (mare and colt included); and comparative philology demon- 
strates their primitive roots to be preserved in almost all European 
languages. 



* ARYAS — HINDUS. 83 

philology gives us the method of seizing the affilia- 
tions of form and of meaning. 

Words of the character pointed one and their prim- 
itive significations — constituting the foundation of 
man's family and social existence — followed the vari- 
ous ethnic branches issuing from the Aryan and ex- 
panding over the ancient world. But no root, no 
name, no signification is to he found for a " servant" 
hearing the meaning of "slave" or "chattel" or ex- 
pressive of a deprivation of the rights of manhood or 
of human dignity. The primitive Aryan mode of 
life was naturally patriarchal or clan-like, and the 
above-mentioned words show that household and rural 
functions were performed by the members of the 
family. What has been already said in another divi- 
sion (see " Hebrews"), applies even more forcibly to 
the Aryas. The Sanscrit word ibha, signified " fami- 
ly," " household," " servants," but never slaves or 
chattels. Both its sound and sense are still perfectly 
preserved in the Irish ibh, which signifies " country," 
or " clan ;" not enslaved men ! The names of weap- 
ons, and other words relating to warfare, which may 
be traced back to the Aryan speech, prove that the 
Aryas warred with other tribes — perhaps with the Tar- 
tars ; and all such foreign enemies were comprehended 
under the collective Sanscrit denomination of barhara, 
varvara, or " barbarians." But even here, where 
we should most look for it, no hint or trace of slavery 
can be found. 

The attempt, historically, to endow certain human 



84 - SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

families or races with special fitness or capacity for 
freedom or slavery — or with a fatality toward the 
one or the other, or toward certain fixed social and 
political conditions — as well as the effort to divide the 
human family into distinct physiological or psycholog- 
ical races — all manifests a narrow appreciation of 
the course of human events; it evidences a very 
limited knowledge of positive history, and perhaps a 
still more limited philosophical comprehension of its 
spirit. If, however, such classifications had any 
scientific basis, assuredly the Aryas and the nations 
issuing from them had no natural, special propensity 
either to be slaves or slave-makers. 

It will be hereafter pointed out, that among the 
various branches of the Aryas, or what are called 
Indo-Europeans, slavery was not a feature of their 
primitive life, but was the result of a long subsequent 
epoch of moral decay and degradation. It was at a 
comparatively late period of their history and under 
precisely the same conditions, that the Romans and 
Greeks began to enslave their own fellows. So was it 
with the Gaels or Celts, and so also with the Slavi. 
The Poles were free from serfdom till the thirteenth 
Christian century ; the Russians only introduced it 
toward the close of the sixteenth— and in both cases 
after dissension, war, and desolation. The Teutons 
alone (Anglo-Saxons included), seen in the light of 
primitive history, had slavery in their household and 
in their national organism, and the slaves, too, of their 
own race and kin. 



ARYAS — HINDUS. 85 

The Aryas descended the slopes of Hindu-Kush and 
the Himalayas, entering the region of the Five or of 
the Seven Rivers (Punjab), wandered along the river 
Jamuna, on the line between Attock and Delhi, suc- 
cessively spread over the whole region between the 
Indus and the Ganges — and here begins their histori- 
cal existence as a people. In the course of this long 
march they conquered or drove before them — seem- 
ingly without any great trouble, at least in the first en- 
counters, the aboriginal occupants of the Trans-Him- 
alayan countries ; and this, too, before they reached 
what may be called the threshold of history. Dis- 
cords and wars early broke out among them, princi- 
pally caused by the continual pressure of northern 
immigrants upon the possessors of the fertile coun- 
tries in the south — caused, too, by the struggles for 
supremacy between families or dynasties, when the 
tents of the patriarchs had expanded into populous 
tribes, and almost into nations ; and also by the strug- 
gles of classes created in the effort to subjugate the 
aboriginal inhabitants, especially those in the south- 
ern parts of India. All these wars took place at 
a very early epoch, and elude positive chronologi- 
cal division. Their history, • as well as that of the 
primitive Aryan or Hindu mode of life, and their 
earliest spiritual conceptions, are pictured in the Ye- 
das, which form the background of the whole Indian 
world. 

The gray and venerable Yedaic age is now divided 
by critics into four periods: the Chhandas period, 



86 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

the Mantra period, the Brahmana period, and the 
Sutra period. 

The Ckhandas period exhibits the purest patriarchal 
and peaceful condition of the family. There were 
then no priests and no division of classes ; the father 
offered up simple sacrifices to heaven, and the simple 
hymns and songs of the family resounded over the 
offering. If the household contained any captive of 
the aboriginal race, such a one, by renouncing his 
ancient customs and creed, and accepting the lan- 
guage, the faith and the law of the conqueror, retain- 
ed life and comparative liberty. And, moreover, all 
ethnological investigations confirm the belief that 
the aborigines of India were of the negro, or what is 
commonly called African family. On this American 
continent the kidnapped and enslaved African has 
accepted both the creed and the language of his op- 
pressor — but for him there is neither liberty nor law. 

JSTot to enslave, but only to subdue — preserving, at 
least partially, the rights of the conquered — was the 
policy of the Aryas in their encounter with barba- 
rians. And in the domestic wars of tribes and dynas- 
ties which yet dimly echo through the second or 
Mantra period, no traces of the enslavement of their 
conquered enemies are to be found. In general, the 
first two periods not only do not show any shadow of 
slavery in the domestic and social relations, but even 
the division into classes or castes does not yet make its 
appearance. During the third or Brahmana period, 
the Yedas give an account of the terrible and bloody 



ARYAS — HINDUS. 87 

struggle which ended in the social and religious vic- 
tory, of the Brahmas, or Brahmins, over the Ksha- 
triyas, who had previously formed the ruling families. 

The Brahmins now reorganized the religious and 
political structure of the Hindus. They divided soci- 
ety into four classes or castes : (it is to be noted here, 
however, that some modern exegetists assert that the 
true meaning of the Sanscrit word Varna, for " caste," 
is not yet clearly apprehended). These four castes 
were : 1. The Brahmins ; 2. The Kshatriyas ; 3. The 
Yaisyas ; 4. The Soudras, or Qudras. The first three 
correspond to the classification already mentioned as 
existing among the Iranians. The Qudras were the 
lowest and most degraded caste ; still they were not 
enslaved, not the property of any other caste, not 
even of the Brahmins — those spiritual and political 
chiefs of the Hindus. The labors of agriculture en- 
nobled even the hands of the Brahmin, and could not 
be performed by slaves nor under the compulsory 
terrors of a master or driver. 

As the word Qudras is not Sanscrit, it is supposed 
that it was the ethnic name of the subdued aborigines 
of which the fourth caste was composed. The off- 
spring of a Brahmin and a Qudra was considered of 
pure blood. The Brahminic law authorized the en- 
slavement of persons belonging to all the inferior 
castes, for debt. Slaves may also have been made in 
the wars with the southward retreating aborigines and 
others ; and slaves may occasionally have been sold 
in the markets, but their number must have been very 



88 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

insignificant. Laws for the servitude of the Cudras — 
if such existed even — must very soon have fallen into 
disuse ; for when Alexander brought Greece and Eu- 
rope into contact with India, the astonished Greeks 
found scarcely any slavery then existing. Several of 
the Greek authors even assert that a positive law pro- 
hibited any kind of enslavement. 

Budha, the great precursor of the Christ, was moved 
to tears, affected to inspiration, by the suffering and 
oppression which resulted from the division of society 
into castes, and by the misery of the poor, who were 
oppressed by the rich land-owner ; but among the so- 
cial and moral plagues, Budha and his disciples enu- 
merate not human slavery. As far as the history of 
antiquity is known, Budha was the first whose relig- 
ious teaching broke through the narrow conception of 
nationalit}^, and taught universal emancipation and 
the brotherhood of all tribes and nations of men. 

The oppression of the poor and of the landless, 
which then existed in India, exists there still. It was 
strengthened by the terrible Mahomedan and Mongol 
conquests, and by the iron rule of the British East 
India "Company. But the imposition by the Mahom- 
edans and Mongols of an oriental despotism over the 
Hindus did not implant domestic chattelhood, nor did 
the English tax-gatherers ever cause Hindu humanity 
to be exposed for sale in the markets or bazaars. 






CHINESE. 89 

X. 
CHINESE. 

AUTHORITIES I 

The Biots, Kaeuffer, Gutzlaff, etc. 

China belongs to the present and to the remotest 
past of the Asiatic world. The historical existence 
of China and her civilization are at least coeval with 
that of Egypt and of Assyria, perhaps older than that 
of the Aryas. 

Some geological . investigators affirm that the 
table-land inclosed between the northern slopes of 
the Himalayas, the Kuenlun, the desert of Gobi — 
which is said to be older than the formation of the 
Himalayas — the Heavenly or Blue mountains, and 
the Altai, was the first land which rose from the 
waters, and that therefore it was the first, and perhaps 
the only place in the north, where man appeared. 
This admitted, the probability is, that from that first 
human family issued a race bearing to-day various / 
appellations, as the Yellow, the Altaic, Turanian, 
Scythic, Finnic, Mongolian and Tartar — which is the 
last general denomination adopted by science, at least 
for the branches occupying central Asia, and reach- 
ing to the frontiers of Europe and the descendants of 
the Aryas. The first immigrants to China from the 
Kuenlun probably followed the current of the Yellow 



90 SLAVEEY 1ST HISTORY. 

river ; and it seems that the aborigines retired before 
the invaders, or perhaps the new yellow settlers 
mixed with the primitive occupants. In the southern 
parts of China, in the mountains of the interior, are 
still found tribes of dar%-colored men resembling the 
negroes or the Pacific islanders, and using notched 
characters similar to those used by the Malays. 

Agriculture seems to have been the sacred occu- 
pation of these yellow-hued settlers along the banks 
of the Yellow river — as it was in the valley of the 
JSTile, of the Euphrates, and on the plains of Iran. Ev- 
erywhere the origin of agriculture is lost in the night 
of time, and Quain or Cain — that is, the kernel, the 
young, the generating, etc., the husbandman of the 
Scriptures — is many thousand years older than Abra- 
ham, the wandering and slave-holding patriarch.- The 
oldest Chinese records show agriculture to have been 
the special occupation of the father of a family, of 
the chief of a clan, and then of the emperor of 
the entire nation. With his own hands he directs the 
plough — therefore the plough could not have been 
desecrated by the hands of a slave. And it was not. 
In the family, in the domestic as well as in the na- 
tional life, slavery first dimly appears only about the 
thirteenth century b. c. 

In the remotest time, labor was, as it is now, the 
basis, the cement and the soul of the Chinese social 
and political life and growth — and by labor I mean, in- 
tellectual and manual labor in its most varied depart- 
ments and developments. E"o classes, no castes, 



CHINESE. 91 

existed in the old primitive times ; and perhaps, during 
many thousand years, no dynasties. The best and ablest 
person was selected as the chief and ruler : all the 
offices or functions were obtained by intellectual fac- 
ulty and by superiority of knowledge, but not inherit- 
ed ; and the same system prevailed throughout all the 
occupations and pursuits of life. No labor whatever 
was degraded or degrading ;- it was carried on by men 
free and equal, and in principle recognized as such. 

In China, as everywhere else, slavery appeared as 
a disease in the social body. It was generated by 
war and crime. Prisoners of war and condemned 
criminals became, so to say, slaves of the state, w T hich 
used them for public labors or hired them out to pri- 
vate individuals. The highest officers of state, per- 
sons over seventy years old, and children, could not 
be condemned to slavery, excepting children exposed 
or abandoned by their parents. Slaves hired by pri- 
vate individuals were only used as helps or servants in 
households and families. But most of the servants 
were always freemen — they are so now ; and slaves 
never were used in agriculture or in the different han- 
dicrafts. The land being generally considered as the 
property of the state, or of the emperor, the sovereign 
divided, distributed it, under certain conditions and ser- 
vitudes, for tribute in money or kind, etc. But slaves 
are not mentioned among the various objects enumer- 
ated as constituting the tribute. The increase of pop- 
ulation generated poverty, and paupers sold and still 
sell themselves or their children into slavery. Repeated 



92 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

domestic or internecine wars, recorded at a very distant 
historical epoch, were among the prominent agencies in 
increasing poverty. Impoverished persons and those 
deprived of their homes either sold themselves or be- 
came serfs attached to the soil, but not chattels. As 
serfs their legal condition and denomination is preserved 
in the books written about the twelfth century b. c, 
by Ma-tuan-lin — they are named usurped families or 
usurjpees. Even after the conquest by the Mantschou 
Tartars, chattelhood did not get hold of the political 
structure, nor did it absorb the agricultural and indus- 
trial domestic economy of the Chinese. With the ex- 
ception of the reigning family, no social position or 
function is privileged as hereditary ; and in the 
same way, accidental slavery was not transmitted 
to the children of the enslaved. Their condition 
was and is controlled and regulated by law, which 
watches over the property of the state. Among the 
numerous domestic wars there are never recorded any 
revolts of slaves — an evidence of their very limited 
number. 

Over-population generated and generates the most 
terrible and varied oppressions and miseries ; but all 
of them lose their sting when compared with chattel- 
hood. Over-population and misery generated the so- 
called coolie-system, which in principle is based on 
voluntary indenture. The reckless cruelties and the 
numerous infamies characterizing the manner in which 
the coolie trade is carried on, is evidence of the utter 
moral degradation and depravity of the white civil- 



CHINESE, 93 

ized Christian traders, and the inefficiency of their re- 
spective governments. 

The Chinese civilization is commonly looked down 
upon from the heights of narrow-minded presumption \y 
and ignorance. About three thousand years b. c, 
public schools existed in China, and a full scientific 
and material culture prevailed there. Chinese records 
(among them the Books of the Sehu Kings), going 
back, perhaps, as far as two thousand five hundred 
years b. c. — contain the most correct and detailed 
statistical accounts -of tribute, and give most reli- 
able geographical notions of China, and of the sub- 
dued and neighboring countries — notions superior in 
exactitude to all similar records transmitted from 
classical antiquity. The Chinese lived in houses, in 
orderly communities, were humanized, polished, fa- 
miliar with the sciences, industries, and all kinds of 
refinements, at a time, and during countless centuries,' 
when the races of northern Europe — prominently 
the Slavi, the Germans, the Anglo-Saxons included y 
— did not, in all probability, even understand how 
to construct huts, and, as savages, roved about in 
the wilderness. 

In a work written by Prince Tscheu-Kong, about 
one thousand one hundred years b. c, are given the 
most minute details of the then existing organ- 
ization of the empire. The administrative mechan- 
ism of that distant epoch finds no equal in the 
whole history of governments or of nations. Sev- 
eral thousand years ago the empire was adminis- 



94 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

tered by six supreme state departments, each with 
perfectly defined attributes, each subdivided into 
special branches, with directors and all orders of 
lower officials and functionaries. Chinese civiliza- 
tion passed its periods of youth and maturity many 
thousand years ago ; and its senility has not ' yet 
reached total decrepitude. It crumbles not to pieces 
even now in its comparatively disjointed and disorgan- 
ized condition. 

~No one can consider China in any way a model 
social organism ; but its duration is marvellous and 
unequalled in the history of the race. The absence of 
hereditary privilege and of chattelhood as social or 
religious institutions, accounts, among other reasons, 
for this unique phenomenon. With all its drawbacks 
and defects, this long-lived civilization, with its schools, 
its general intelligence, its thousands-of-years old rou- 
tine, compares, in many respects, favorably with that 
in the Southern States calling itself Christian, which, 
having partly inherited the great European develop- 
ment, and receiving influences from the free sections 
of the Union, has, nevertheless, for the last thirty or 
forty years, turned on its own crooked tracks, and, 
now prohibits, under severe penalty, schools for the 
children of its field laborers, whom it keeps in bond- 
age. It sighs also for a further extension of oli~ 
garchic privileges, and for the enslavement of all 
human labor: re-enslaves the free or expels them; 
legalizes and sanctifies the sum of all social villanies : 
whose last word is the Lynch law, and the reckless, 



CHINESE. 95 

lawless persecution of free speech and even of free 
thought ; while assassination becomes more and more 
frequent. 

In the most ancient Asiatic world, the primitive 
societies generally had analogous beginnings, what- 
ever may have been the regions and climates cradling 
them, whatever the difference of time, epochs, or 
race : characteristics. Analogous events and conditions 
evoked similar developments in the primitive men. 
The manifestations of man's intellectual and physical 
activity were everywhere spontaneous : a transmission 
of the various rudiments of civilization cannot logic- 
ally be admitted. 

Osiris, Cain, Yao, were urged by like necessities, 
when they inaugurated agriculture in Egypt, in Eu- 
phratia, or along the valleys of the Yellow river. On 
the Nile, on the Euphrates, on the Ganges, on the 
Hoang-ho, man — red or black, white or yellow — ob- 
served naturej utilized even the inundations, regu- 
lated and embanked the beds of rivers, cut canals and 
trenches to irrigate the parched soil. Everywhere — 
and certainly without imitating each other — but 
urged by surrounding circumstances, man worked, 
toiled, constructed habitations with the materials at 
hand — stone in Egypt; bricks, plaster, wood, etc., in 
Babylonia and China ; raised cities in rich and fertile 
plains, erected edifices, and invented characters and 
signs to fix and to transmit to others ideas, notions and 
facts. Whatever may have been the special nature 
and form of these characters, whether hieroglyphics 



96 SLAVERY LN HISTORY. 

or phonetics, etc., undoubted! y they were original and 
not transmitted creations. These inventions arose 
at places separated by distances then almost impas- 
sable, by the same necessities and thoughts, by obser- 
vation and imitation of nature, and by many other 
inner and outer promptings and circumstances. 
The rudiments of mathematics, astronomy, and other 
sciences, were created by this contact of man's mind 
with nature ; and it is difficult, if not impossible, to 
admit that Egyptians or Chaldeans were the instruc- 
tors of the Aryas or of the Chinese, or vice versa. . 

Of late an attempt has been made to justify Amer- 
ican chattelhood by the fact that at the birth of 
Christ, half of the population of the Roman empire 
— about sixty millions — groaned under domestic slav- 
eiy. This estimate may be below the true mark ; but 
the humanity whose emancipation or redemption was 
to be accomplished, was not limited to the Roman 
world. For, from Iran and the Indus to the Kuenlun 
ridges, dwelt a population five or six times greater 
than that which populated the Roman empire, and 
that, too, almost un visited by that terrible social 
plague which is now represented as being a divine 
blessing. Whatever may have been the other mul- 
tiform social calamities which befell them — wars, 
massacres, destructions, impoverishments, and deso- 
lations — are, after all, but transient visitations; while 
American chattelhood, as devised by its apostles, eter- 
nally degrades both master and chattel. 



GREEKS. 97 

XL 
GREEKS. 

AUTHORITIES : 

Polybius, Grote, 0. Mutter, Beckh, Curtius, Clinton, Finlay, etc. 

At the foot of the Julian Alps, above the head of 
the Adriatic, the branch of the Aryas which peopled 
Greece separated from their brethren who wandered 
into Italy. Keeping to the coast of Adria, the se- 
ceders reached the mountainous gorges of Epirus and 
the plains of Thessaly. From the southern slopes of 
the Cambunian mountains and of Olympus, they, in 
course of time, spread over Greece and Peloponnesus. 
Such at least are the results of the most recent re- 
searches concerning the pioneers whose labors pre- 
pared that region for the part it afterward played in 
history. They cleared the forests, drained the marshes, 
cut canals to let out the stagnant waters in mountain- 
basins so common in Greece ; they regulated the cur- 
rents of rivers and streams, made the soil arable, and 
the region fit for man and for further culture. These 
primitive cultivators of the valleys of Greece, and 
builders of the Cyclopean structures, called them- 
selves, or were called by others, Pelasgi (that is, those 
issuing from black soil, etc.), and are regarded as the 
earliest occupants of Hellenic soil. They were the 
first settlers, and most probably offshoots of the same 
original stem whose successive branches mingled with 
5 



98 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

the Pelasgi, or crowded them out and took their place 
in history as Achives, Hellenes, and Ionians — the last 
being considered by ancient as well as by modern 
writers as having been the autochthones of Attica 
and of other neighboring regions. To these Pelasgi 
and other primitive occupants, to their laborious pur- 
suits and occupations, to their simple social structure, 
as well as to the essentially primitive social life of 
the Greeks, Herodotus refers — asserting that at the 
outset slavery was unknown in Greece, and Especially 
in Attica. 

ThePelasgian epoch was succeeded by what is com- 
monly called the legendary or heroic age. In this 
Homeric epoch free yeomen or agriculturists own 
and till the soil ; all the handicrafts and profes- 
sions are free. Carpenters, smiths, leather-dressers, 
etc., were all freemen, and so also were the bards and 
"the leeches" (a highly esteemed class in primitive 
Greece), But wealth already began to accumulate, 
and thx Tarms of the more fortunate were tilled by 
poor hired freemen called Thetes. 

The geographical conformation of Greece furnished, 
as it still does, a natural incitement to war and piracy. 
Both formed prominent characteristics of the heroic 
times. Phoenician vessels visited the shores, and 
Phoenician settlements and factories were built at 
various points. These traffickers, perhaps, taught 
the Greeks that the feeble may be profitably enslaved 
by the strong, or at any rate they were the cus- 
tomers of the Greek pirate. 



i/ 



GREEKS. 99 

The general Greek word for slave explains the 
origin of slavery. Dmoos and dmoe, slave, go 
back to dmao or damao, to snbdne, to snbjngate, 
and so bear witness of war and violence either 
between individuals, or between clans, tribes, and 
districts, and then of incursions into distant lands. 
Slavery became an object of luxury, but not of 
social and economical necessity. It was confined to 
the dwelling, of the chiefs and the sovereign ; but 
did not invade the whole community. Leaders of 
freebooting expeditions seized every kind of booty, 
taking as many prisoners as they could on sea and on 
land. If the expedition or foray failed, the chief 
and his followers became, in their turn, prisoners 
and slaves. The prisoners were employed for do- 
mestic use within the precincts of the dwelling, as 
servants, shepherds, etc., or were sold or exchanged 
for others. The Phoenicians sold Asiatics or Libyans 
to Greeks and to Pontian barbarians, and received in 
exchange the prey made by Greeks in Greece or in 
Pontus. The Phoenicians occasionally kidnapped 
women and boys and sold them to Asiatics, Africans, J 
and Celt-Iberians. Then, as everywhere throughout 
remotest and classical antiquity, many of the enslav- 
ed had previously belonged to the higher and even 
the highest conditions in their respective tribes, na- 
tions, or communities. So Eumseus, the swineherd 
of Ulysses . immortalized by Homer, was the son 
of a chief of some island or district, who, having 
been kidnapped by Phoenicians, was sold to Laertes. 



100 SLAVEKY IN HISTORY. 

In mediaeval times, likewise, the prisoner taken on the 
battle-field and kept for ransom, if not for service, often 
was superior in birth and station to his keeper. No 
such social classifications, however, are intrinsic or 
normal, but only conditional, relative, and conven- 
tional, even when inherited. Logically they have 
the same signification and value in a well-graduated 
society, with its castles, palaces, charters and other 
privileges, as on plantations or among roving nomads 
and savage tribes. And thus, among the Southern 
slaves, descending from prisoners of w T ar or from kid- 
napped Africans, there may be several of a purer 
aristocratic lineage than many of their drivers, even 
if the latter were F. F. Y. 

Enfranchisement, manumission, and ransom were 
largely practised in legendary Greece. The children 
of freemen by slave-women were free, and equal to 
those of legitimate birth. Most of the wars and expe- 
ditions during the heroic or Achivian piratical epoch, 
were made for the sake of kidnapping men and wo- 
men, to sell or to exchange with the Phoenicians for 
various luxuries. Such was the general origin of 
slavery at the time when history throws its first rays 
on the Grecian world. 

Many defend slavery on the plea that it softened 
and softens the results of wars and inroads; that pris- 
oners, once slaughtered, are preserved for the sake of 
being sold into slavery. But already, during the so- 
called heroic age of Greece, wars and forays were 
made for the express purpose of getting captives 



GREEKS. 101 

or for kidnapping. The robber or pirate was always 
sure to find a buyer for his booty, otherwise he would 
have had no inducement to act. And thus slavery, in- 
stead of softening war, was its very source. The Greeks 
of the heroic age were incited to make inroads and dep- 
redations by the facility and security they had of profit- 
ably disposing of their captives by selling them into 
slavery. The bloody drama played, many, many 
centuries ago, in Peloponnesus and Greece, on the 
Ionian and Egean seas, and among the islands of the 
Archipelago, is repeated to-day on both sides of the 
Atlantic — on African and on American shores and 
islands. The tribes in Africa war with each other, 
destroy and burn towns and villages, expressly and 
exclusively because they find customers for slaves 
among Christians, and among self-styled civilized, 
humanized white men. Thus much for the assertion 
that American slavery contributes to soften the fate 
of prisoners of war in Africa, and humanizes the sav- ^ 
ages. It bestializes them, together with their pirat- 
ical purchasers and their Southern patrons. The 
analogy holds good here, at a distance of many thou- 
sand years and many thousand miles, among differ- 
ent social conditions, in a different civilization, and 
in the higher moral development of the white man. 

'New invasions successively rolled over the valleys 
of Hellas ; they changed considerably the social con- 
dition of the populations, expelling or subduing many 
of the former occupants and yeomen. From the north, 
from Thessaly, poured Hellenes, Heraclides, and Do- 



102 SLAVEKY IN HISTORY. 

rians, west and south, principally into the Pelopon- 
nesus. Henceforth the whole Greek family was 
represented in history by two cardinal social, political, 
and intellectual currents^ through the so-called Doric 
and Ionic races. 

In Thessaly, serfdom — but not chattelhood — seems" 
to have been anciently established. New-comers 
subdued the earlier tillers of the soil. The subdued 
became villeins, bondsmen, adscripti glebes. Such 
dependent cultivators were the Thessalian Penestae, 
who paid over to the landowners a certain propor- 
tion of the produce of the soil ; furnished those 
retainers by which the families of the chiefs, or 
the more powerful, were surrounded, and served in- 
war as their followers. But they could not be sold 
out of the country ; they had a permanent tenure in 
the soil, and enjoyed family and village relations. 
Perhaps more than twenty centuries afterward, this 
was also the condition of the rustics all over western 
and mediaeval Europe, and in some parts this condi- 
tion even lasted down to our century — everywhere 
similar events generating emphatically analogous re- 
sults and conditions. The holdings of the Thessalian 
Penestae were protected by the state, whose subjects 
they were, and not chattels of the individual propri- 
etors. The Thessalian and Doric invaders and con- 
querors imposed a similar yoke wherever they were 
victorious and finally settled. The last Doric and Her- 
aclidic invasion, which culminated in the institutions 
and history of Sparta, subdued the former occupants 



GEEEKS. 103 

of Peloponnesus, some of whom were likewise of Doric 
origin. Of such origin, in considerable proportion, 
were the renowned Helots. So, also, in course of time, 
the descendants of the companions of Achilles became, 
in the north, serfs under certain conditions of a more 
liberal nature; while others, descending from the 
companions of Agamemnon and Menelaus, became 
Sparta's Helots. 

The condition of the Helots, in many respects, was 
similar to that of the Penestas of Thessalj. They could 
not be sold beyond the borders of the state, not even 
by the state itself, which apportioned them to citizens, 
reserving to itself the power of emancipation. They 
lived in the same villages which were once their own 
property, before conquest transformed the free yeomen 
or peasants into bondsmen. The state employed the 
Helots in the construction of public works. Their fate, 
however terrible it may have been, was altogether 
within the law, whereas other domestic slaves in 
Greece, just like those in the Southern States, depended 
upon the arbitrary will of individuals. The Spartan 
law had various provisions for the emancipation of the 
Helots. They served in the army and fought the 
great battles of the Lacedemonians. Will the South 
intrust their chattels with arms and drill them into 
military companies? 

Sparta was the seat of an oligarchy, which owned 
the greater part of the lands of Laconia, and kept in 
dependency the other autochthonous tribes, which in 
some way or other escaped the fate of the Helots. 



104 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

Such were the Periokes, enjoying certain political and 
full civil rights. But, in the course of events, the oli- 
garchy tried to violate those rights, and the Periokes 
joined Epaminondas against Sparta, facilitating its sub- 
jugation, just as, centuries afterward, they joined Fla- 
minius and the Romans against their Spartan masters. 
In Lacedemonia, as in Attica, there existed small land- 
holders, called goAnori or geomori, and others called 
autougroi — rustics possessing petty patches of land, 
or farming small parcels owned by large proprietors. 
Just so in the South the large plantations are sur- 
rounded by poor whites, by " sand-hillers," etc., some 
of them owning small patches,* generally of poorer soil ; 
others altogether homeless and landless. Subsequently 
these geomori, etc. — poor, free populations and their 
homesteads— were almost wholly engulfed by large 
plantations and domestic slavery. This was the work 
of time, as in her great days scarcely any chattel was 
known in Sparta. 

The landed oligarchy of our Southern plantations 
is in more than one respect analogous with that of 
Sparta. The city of Sparta itself was rather an 
agglomeration of spacious country habitations than 
resembling other great cities. 

When the Dorians made Sparta the centre of their 
power, the lands of Laconia were divided into ten 
thousand equal lots for the ten thousand Spartan citi- 
zens. Undoubtedly the homesteads, cleared and owned 
by the first settlers and colonists in the South, were 
more equally divided than they are now; and the 



GREEKS. 105 

increase in the extent of plantations on the one hand, 
and the decrease of the respectability of the poorer 
settlers and their transformation into " poor oppressed 
white men,"* on the other, were both effected by do- 
mestic slavery. At the time of Lycurgus — about four 
hundred years after the division — the above number of 
oligarchs was reduced to nine thousand ; at the time 
of Herodotus — about four hundred years after Ly- 
curgus — to ei^ht thousand : and thus a reduction of 
one-tenth took place during each period of from three 
hundred to four hundred years. This was the time 
of the world-renowned Spartan poverty and virtue. 
But wars, conquests, etc., changed the character of 
the Spartans ; lnxury and wealth crept in, and with 
them came large estates and domestic slaves, the latter 
chiefly consisting of Greek prisoners of war. At the 
beginning of the first Peloponnesian war, Sparta may 
have had two hundred and twenty thousand Helots, 
and there were comparatively few domestic slaves 
in that number. The Peloponnesian war made the 
Spartans leaders of Greece, but filled Sparta with 
prisoners from other Greek states, and introduced 
wealth : from that war begins the decline of the Spar- 
tan spirit. The Helots and the impoverished poor 
whites successively became chattels. Sparta could only 
muster seven hundred citizens against Epaminondas at 
Lenctra, During the period between Herodotus and 
Aristotle the number of citizens was reduced to little 
above one thousand. At the Macedonian conquest, 

* Edward A. Pollard, letter to the Tribune. 

5* 



106 SLAVERY m HISTORY. 

Sparta averaged fourteen chattels for every three free- 
men. One hundred years after Aristotle, under lung 
Agis, about two hundred oligarchs constituting the 
body politic, the citizens of Sparta owned nearly all 
the lands of Laconia, and worked them by chattels. 

This numerical reduction of citizens and deteriora- 
tion of their historic character principally affected the 
military standing of Sparta. Causes so obvious as 
not to require explanation prevent at present a simi- 
lar diminution of the number of Southern oligarchs, 
notwithstanding the existing numerical disproportion 
between them and the non-slaveholding whites, whose 
political freedom, to a rational appreciation, is rather 
nominal than real. The disease is the same — its 
workings alone are different. The sword was the soul 
of Spartan institutions : the pure and elevated concep- 
tion of the American social structure rests not on 
physical but on intellectual and moral force ; but its 
deterioration is visible in the new conception of 
slavery inaugurated and sustained by the militant 
oligarchs. The process of moral and intellectual de- 
composition in the South would be still more rapid 
but for the various influences from the Free States, 
which, like refreshing breezes, fan its fainting ener- 
gies. 

The sword, it is true, may have decimated whole 
Spartan communities ; but such losses were supplied 
from the class of the Periokes and other freemen, and 
even sometimes from the Helots. Domestic slavery 
devoured the small estates, degraded the freemen, and 



GREEKS. 107 

oried up the sources of political renovation. Five 
thousand Spartans fought at Platese, which gives a 
total population of about forty thousand. The num- 
ber of Helots owned by them at that time amounted 
to one hundred and seventy-five thousand. Subse- 
quently, after the Peloponnesian and Macedonian 
wars, these Helots were transformed into chattels, 
and the degenerate Spartans attempted to transform 
the Periokes into Helots, but made them simply deadly 
enemies. Almost in proportion as the Spartan oli- 
garchs increased in wealth and possessions, not only did 
the number of Helots and slaves increase, but military 
ardor decreased. At Leuctra, Sparta hired her cav- 
alry ; and soon after, Sparta, rich in Helots and chattels 
but jDoor in citizens, was forced passively to witness 
the curtailing of her frontiers by Philip of Macedon. 

The Helots often revolted ; and frequent con- 
spiracies were discovered and subdued in terrible 
slaughter, when the oligarchs believed themselves 
again safe. The old laws of most of the American 
colonies, north and south, contain repeated regula- 
tions, dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, concerning conspiracies, revolts, and tumults 
perpetrated by negroes ; and this, too, several genera- 
tions before the birth of active abolitionism. For not 
to abolitionism but to the love of liberty inborn in 
human nature — in the Spartan Helot as in the colored 
chattel of the Southern oligarch — are to be attributed 
the conspiracies continually fermenting among South- 
ern slaves. At times the Spartans were obliged to ask 



108 SLAVERY IN HISTOKY. 

succor from the Athenians and other allies against 
their revolted Helots. To-day the Union is fully able 
to suppress servile revolts, but in some future time 
the South may vainly look in all quarters of the hori- 
zon for active allies. It may find some well-wishers 
among its interested northern sympathizers, but the 
chattels will have the sympathy of the civilized 
Christian and heathen world, besides finding allies 
among the free colored populations of the Antilles. 
Under England's fatherly and humane direction, these 
colored populations are being initiated into genuine 
Christian civilization, and make comparatively great 
strides and progress in material and political culture, 
in orderly life, in self-government, in the employment 
of the free press, and in debating their interests in 
legislative assemblies and cabinet councils. Ever 
since the establishment of American slavery on a 
social and religious basis, the mass of the white pop- 
ulation in the South, and, above all, the great heroes, 
apostles, and combatants of the new political creed, 
are returning to barbarism — willingly and deliberately 
renouncing all genuine mental and moral culture. 
And thus the two extremes may meet in some future 
emergency — the colored inhabitant of the Antilles as 
a superior civilized being, will face the barbarized 
white oppressor in the South. 

The Spartan Helot increased with a fecundity fear- 
ful for the oligarchs, who resorted to the horrible 
kryptea, or slaughter of unarmed Helots all over La- 
eonia at a time appointed specially and secretly by 



GREEKS. 109 

the ephors. This was the last resort to avert the 
danger, and more than once was it used during the 
brilliant epoch of Sparta. 

In the South the chattels likewise increase very 
rapidly, but not rapidly enough to satisfy the breeders, 
planters, and slave-traders. All things considered, the 
colored enslaved population increases in a proportion 
by far more rapid than the white. After 1783 the 
blacks were estimated at between five and six hun 
dred thousand : the census of 1860 will find them full 
four millions : and no wonder. Trafficking slave-breed- 
ers, as well as planters, organize breeding as systemati- 
cally as cattle-raisers attend to their stock. In Vir- 
ginia this is the principal pursuit, and the chief source 
of income from domestic husbandry. The breeders 
have small enclosures to gently exercise the young 
human stock like the breeders of valuable horses. In 
some States, principally in the cotton region, the col- 
ored chattels outnumber the whites; in others the 
respective numbers are nearly equal. About one hun- 
dred and fifty years ago, South Carolina, through the 
voice of her law-makers, referring to the increase in 
chattels, declared it an " afflicting providence of God 
that the white persons do not proportionably multi- 
ply." Nowadays South Carolina finds the affliction 
a blessing. Though her colored population already 
outnumbers the white, she is first in assaulting hu- 
manity by reopening the slave-trade. 

Cotton is a plant indigenous to the old world — to 
Asia and Africa. Its culture by free labor may soon 



110 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

become very profitable in other regions of the globe. 
Sooner or later tins will end the exclusive American 
monopoly of its production, and then the dead weight 
of ehattelhood will press fearfully on the oligarchs in 
economical as in social ways, even if the chattels re- 
main quiet : this is, however, impossible to suppose, 
on account of their continually increasing numbers. 
Already slaves are tortured, murdered, burnt and 
slaughtered at the first danger, even though it be 
imaginary. Now this is done individually, and, even 
according to Southern notions, illegally. When the 
profits from slave-labor shall dwindle, and the danger 
from great masses of chattels shall increase, self-pres- 
ervation and fatality will force the slaveocracy into at- 
tempting to re-enact the Spartan krypteia : the cattle- 
breeder easily transforming himself into the butcher. 
Even now many of them are on the way to bringing 
this about, by exposing their old and unproductive 
field hands to perish from want and miser}^. 

In the course of about four centuries, both during 
and after the Peloponnesian war, the Spartan oligar- 
chy was enriched more and more by the spoils of 
victorious wars, and by the importation of slaves as 
Avar prisoners from other Greek and from barbarous 
nations. Then the difference between the rich and 
poor was more striking, and the eternal process of 
oppressing the poor, seizing upon their property, or 
buying them out, was busily and cheerfully pursued. 
Then Laconia was held by comparatively few Spar- 
tan slaveholders — but there were no more heroes of 



GREEKS. Ill 

Thermopylae. Citizens and freemen were a scarcity 
during the Augustan period; but slaves, the prop- 
erty of a few wealthy owners, actually covered La- 
codemonia and Sparta. Domestic slavery undermin- 
ed and destroyed the Spartan nation in precisely 
the same manner as it did others before and since. 
The enslaved Helots and Greeks, and many of the 
descendants of the enslavers, became, in their turn, 
slaves of the Romans, then of the Slavic invaders, 
afterward of the Crusaders, till finally all of them, 
masters and slaves, groaned Under the yoke of the 
Osmanlis. The traveller can now scarcely find the 
few mouldering ruins of the once proud and en- 
slaving city. Spartan history covers nearly a thou- 
sand years : and for ceatnries the destructive disease 
was at work. Some of its symptoms, in the course of 
half a century, are already highly developed in the 
South. 

Piracy and kidnapping, which in Greece originated 
at a time when every man saw an enemy almost in his 
immediate neighbor, did not wholly cease when nation- 
al relations became more normal and regular. Whei 
slavery began to permeate the domestic economy, pi- 
racy and the slave-traffic were of course more active. 
The Southern enslavers assert that their region is not 
yet supplied with the necessary number of chattels. 
They draw on piracy, kidnapping, and bloodshed in 
Africa. The almost incessant wars between the Greek 
neighboring tribes and nations encouraged slavery; 
and innocent citizens, going from one Greek state to 



112 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

another, were often enslaved through enmity and 
greed. However, this savage custom became soft- 
ened and finally abandoned when the mutual relations 
became more civilized and regulated ; whereas free- 
men from free states of the Union are arrested and 
imprisoned in the so-called civilized slave-holding 
states, and in some cases they can be legally sold 
as slaves. 

In Bceotia slaves were not numerous — being only 
occasionally made and used. Neither serfs, bond- 
men, nor chattels, were held in Elis, Locris, or by the 
Arcadians, Phocians, or Achseans, until the downfall 
of Greek dignity, liberty, and independence, under 
the Macedonian and Roman rule. The Phocians pro- 
hibited slavery by express legislation. 

The Ionians in Attica boasted that they sprang 
from their native soil. They were therefore the prim- 
itive tillers and cultivators of their not over-fertile and 
rather rocky land, of about one hundred and ninety 
square miles. This land was divided more or less 
equally into small homesteads worked by yeomen, to 
whom chattels would have been a burden. Centuries 
after the heroic or legendary epoch, when Attica pos- 
sessed wealthier landowners, Hesiod advises the agri- 
culturists to work their lands by the free labor of the 
Thetes in preference to slave labor. 

Athens became very early a commercial city, and 
perhaps piratical expeditions for the kidnapping of 
slaves were fitted out from the Piraeus. At any rate, 
slavery, chattelhood, was especially, if not exclusive- 



GREEKS. < 118 

ly, fostered when commerce became more extensive. 
Athens was the seat and focus of domestic slavery. 
In the course of time almost all trades were carried 
on by slaves, as also mining, and finally, farming. 
But all this was the growth of ^the long process of 
centuries. 

Debtors were enslaved; but Solon abolished this 
right of the creditor. He likewise abolished the cus- 
tom of going about armed in the community. Gen- 
erally it is a sign of a dangerous and very degraded 
state of society when men carry arms as a necessity. 
By a strange coincidence, since slavery has been pro- 
claimed a moral and religious duty, the use of bowie- 
knives-, revolvers, and rifles becomes more and more 
the order of the day*in the South. Not against the 
slave, not against any foreign enemy, not even against 
the abolitionist, do the men of the South arm them- 
selves, but it is against each other that they have re- 
course to armed assaults in their private and public 
intercourse. From the South the savage custom in- 
vades the North, and it has in some cases been forced 
on peaceful Northern members of Congress in self- 
defence against the assaults of their Southern col- 
leagues. 

The Ionic race had no serfs or Helots, either in 
Attica or elsewhere. But in Attica, as in other Greek 
communities, and indeed throughout the whole world, 
from among the primitive yeomen or peasants, emerg- 
ed those who, more thrifty, more successful, or more 
brave, accumulated wealth in various ways. Such 



J 



114 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

was one mode in which aristocracy originated. These 
yeomen growing richer, acquired more land, bought 
out smaller farmers, and could hire more field hands. 
Even before Solon the aim of the rich was to trans- 
form freeholders inta tenants, but Solon stemmed this 
current for a long period of time. 

Parents could sell their children into slavery ; Solon 
reduced this rightio such daughters as willingly sub- 
mitted to seduction. A poor man could sell himself 
into slavery, and children exposed by their parents 
were enslaved by the public authorities. 

War and traffic furnished the great supplies of 
slaves or chattels for the Athenians. Such chattels 
were from all nations and races, and the black slaves 
constituted an accidental and imperceptible minority. 
Witness JEsop telling the story of a rustic who bought 
a black slave and unsuccessfully tried to bleach or to 
whitewash it. If blacks had been common merchan- 
dise, the rustic would have been familiar with its 
nature. Slavery was transmitted from parents to chil- 
dren, if the prisoner of war was not ransomed or the 
slave not manumitted. But at any time a slave could 
receive or buy his freedom, and a chattel once liber- 
ated could not, under penalty of capital punishment, 
again be violently enslaved. In the South they begin 
to legislate for the re-enslavement of the liberated : 
the odium no longer falls on the individual but on 
the whole body politic. All over the ancient world 
the state watched over and protected the once en- 
franchised slave : the modern slave-holding polity ex- 



GREEKS. 115 

pels him or legislates for his disfranchisement. In 
Athens, as all over Greece, the offspring of freemen 
and slave-women were free. 

At first slaves performed domestic service, and after- 
ward, when their number increased, they w T ere em- 
ployed in various trades. The state used them in public 
works, sometimes to row the ships. But the greatest 
number were employed to work the mills and mines of 
Attica. However, the state itself did not work the 
mines, but rented them generally without the slave 
labor ; though private individuals rented them for 
a term of vears, together with the slaves w T ho worked 
them. Slowly chattelhood spread over the rural 
economy of Attica. 

About the time of the Persian wars, rural property 
was still nearly equally divided among the citizens. 
Wealth was accumulated and represented in commerce, 
in various industries, and in the precious metals. But 
at that time slaves nowhere outnumbered the freemen. 
At the battle of Marathon the Athenians had ten 
thousand hoplites or heavily armed able-bodied citi- 
zens ; at Platea eight thousand ; and in both battles 
nearly as many peltasts or lightly-armed troops — 
poorer citizens, bat not serfs, or retainers, or slaves. 
Before the invasion of Xerxes, the free population of 
Atrica probably amounted to more than one hundred 
and twenty thousand of both sexes and all ages. The 
slave population is estimated at the utmost as sixty 
thousand. 

Athens, like all the other Greek republics, colonized 



116 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

other countries with the surplus of their free — mostly 
poor — population. Herodotus died in such an expedi- 
tion. The Dorians very likely colonized Sicily, the Ioni- 
ans Italy or Magna Grecia. Such colonizations relieved 
the over-populated mother-country, extended the Hel- 
lenic culture, but likewise, in more than one way, fos- 
tered and nursed slavery. The Greek colonists in 
Sicily and in Italy, conquering or pushing into the 
interior the aborigines of these lands, enslaved, kid- 
napped and sold them. Then the Greek cities warred 
with and enslaved each other. Such was the case 
between Sybaris and Crotona, or in Sicily between 
Syracuse, Girgentum, etc. The rich men of Athens 
bought more and more slaves, purchased the lands 
of the poor, substituted in various handicrafts their 
gangs of slave laborers for freemen, and exported the 
impoverished freemen.* The increase of large es'tates 
and chattels went hand in hand with the decrease of 
freemen and public spirit in Athens ; and the same 
was the case in other large commercial cities of 
Greece. 

After the Persian war Athens became the wealth- 
iest of commercial cities, and the Athenians a con- 
quering nation. Both circumstances increased the 
number of slaves. But still the landed property was 
not yet absorbed. Alcibiades owned only about three 
hundred plethra, or about seventy -five acres of land in 
Attica. The wealthy slave-owners and oligarchs were 

* So the poor whites of the South emigrate and settle in the Western 
territories, and the planters magnify their plantations and their chattels. 



GREEKS. 117 

not in power, but they owned mines in Attica and 
landed estates in various Greek dependencies and 
colonies. Slavery prevailed in the city, and it became 
more and more common on the farms. However, 
on the eve of the Peloponnesian war, democracy 
still prevailed. The oligarchs, proud of their slaves, 
mines, plantations and estates, scorned the democracy 
of Athens, composed of artists, yeomen, operatives, 
artisans — who really formed the soul of the great Per- 
iclean epoch. 

Oligarchies are alike all over the world ; in most of 
them, slave-holders, however called, live upon the 
labor of others ; all of them scorn the laboring 
classes. The Southern militant planters and their 
Northern servile retainers scorn the enlightened 
masses of working-men, the farmers and operatives 
of the free states. But it is those masses which ex- 
clusively give original signification to America in 
the history of human development. Athens and the 
various monuments of the Periclean epoch coruscate 
over doomed Hellas: so the villages of the free states, 
with their schools and laborious, intelligent, self-reliant 
populations, shed their rays now over the Christian 
world. And the sight of such a village is a far differ- 
ent subject of contemplation from that of the slave- 
crowded plantation. 

i Slavery increased rapidly in Athens, as in all the 
great commercial centres, and in the adjacent isles of 
Greece. At the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, 
Attica had a population of about twenty thousand 



118 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

male adults, or a little over one hundred thousand free 
persons of all ages and sexes. The whole free popu- 
lation of Greece is estimated to have been at that 
time about eight hundred thousand souls ; and the 
slaves — the Spartan serfs or Helots included — perhaps 
outnumbered the freemen. Thucydides says that the 
island of Chios had about two hundred and ten thou- 
sand slaves, the largest number next to Sparta ; then 
came Athens, with nearly two hundred thousand hu- 
man chattels ; while other great commercial cities of 
Greece, as Sycyon and Corinth, likewise contained 
very large numbers. 

The Peloponnesian war was waged with all the 
violence of a family feud. It spread desolation, im- 
poverishment, carnage and slavery over Greece. Cap- 
tives made by the one or the other contending party, 
were sold by tens of thousands into slavery ; these 
captives were principally the small freeholders, the 
thetes and geomori — operatives, artisans, and, indeed, 
free workmen of every kind. Their number conse- 
quently diminished, and their small estates were either 
bought or taken violently by the rich, who thus 
simultaneously increased the number of their chattels 
and their acres of land. Thus did slavery permeate 
more and more the Greek social, polity, until, at the 
epoch between Pericles and the beginning of the Ma- 
cedonian wars, the number of slaves in Athens and 
Attica was nearly doubled : but the free population 
did not thus increase. Large landed estates became 
more and more common, till, in the time of Demos- 



GKEEKS. 119 

thenes, the soil of Attica was concentrated in compar- 
atively few hands. At Cheronea, the Athenians fought 
against Philip with mercenary troops, and even armed 
their slaves. But the spirit of Marathon and of Pla- 
ta3i was gone, and Athens succumbed. The gold of 
Philip was acceptable to the rich slave-holders, and 
went principally into the hands of the oligarchs; but 
alas! no second Miltiades ever emerged from their ranks. 

It is supposed that at the epoch of the Macedonian 
conquest, the proportion of slaves and freemen was as 
seven to three. Near the beginning of the reign of 
Alexander, the free population of Greece amounted 
to one million, and the slaves to one million four hun- 
dred and thirty-five thousand. The census taken in 
Attica about that time, under the archon Demetrius 
of Phaleris, gives for Athens and Attica twenty-one 
thousand adult male citizens, or a little over one hun- 
dred thousand persons of all ages and sexes, and four 
hundred thousand slaves. The slave population pre- 
ponderated, however, only in the wealthy part of 
Greece; the poorer agricultural communities, as al- 
ready mentioned, having been free from its curse. 
Thus Corinth had four hundred and fifty thousand, 
and JEgina four hundred and seventy thousand slaves; 
and this is the reason that Philip, Alexander, Antipa- 
ter, and other conquerors had such comparatively easy 
work in destroying Greek liberty. 

The Macedonian wars also spread desolation, sla- 
very and ruin ; and of Thebans alone, Alexander sold 
over thirty thousand into slavery. 



120 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

Thus ended the independent political existence of 
Greece and Athens. Rich slave-holders, indeed, they 
still had ; but they ceased to have a history of their 
own, or a distinct political existence ; and Greece be- 
came a satellite successively of Macedonia, Syria, 
Egypt and Rome. 

To conclude: in Athens, as indeed throughout 
Greece, the commercial cities inaugurated domestic 
slavery. Slavery first penetrated into domestic life ; 
then entered into the various trades and industries, 
and finally, almost wholly absorbed the lands and 
the agricultural economy. It also penetrated into the 
s/ functions of state, and various minor offices were held 
by slaves — which anomaly was afterward reproduced 
in Rome, especially under the emperors. 

In the slave section of our own country the system 
has already got possession of domestic and family life, 
of agriculture, and of some of the handicrafts ; and 
slaves are employed on some of the railroads as brake- 
men and assistant-engineers. This may be a cheering 
proof of the intellectual capacity of the colored race, 
but it proves also the analogy which exists everywhere 
between the workings of slavery, whatever may be 
the distance of ages or the color of the enslaved. 

It was only during the period of the moral, social 
and political decomposition of Greece that slavery 
flourished. A certain Diophantus at one period pro- 
posed a law to enslave all the laborers, artisans and 
operatives in Athens — so that those who now so loudly 
demand the same thing here, had prototypes more 



GREEKS. 121 

than twenty-four centuries ago ; for, though history- 
has transmitted to infamous memory only the name 
of Diophantus, yet undoubtedly he stood not alone. 

In Athens and in Greece we see the cancer growing 
steadily over the whole social and political organism, 
:.Dtil all Attica and almost the whole of the ancient 
^orld were divided only between slave-holders and 
chattels. 

In the slave marts of Athens and of Corinth, and 
afterward in that of Delos, the sale of chattels was 
conducted in precisely the same way as it now is in 
Richmond, in New Orleans and in Memphis. The 
proceedings of the auctioneers and the traders, of the 
buyers and the sellers, were as cruel then as they are 
now. The same eulogies of the capacities of able- 
bodied men, the same piquant descriptions of the va- 
rious attractions of the women, the same tricks to 
conceal bodily defects, and similar guaranties between 
vender and buyer, then as now. 

When, finally, laborers of almost every kind, handi- 
craftsmen and agriculturists, had thus become enslaved, 
all the freemen, both rich and poor, were speedily 
swallowed up in an equal degradation. The family 
became disorganized ; the republics perished. This 
was completely accomplished when Greece passed 
from Macedonian to Roman rule : then domestic sla- 
very flourished as never before. In that final struggle 
the password of the Greek slave-holders was, " Unless 
we are quickly lost, we cannot be saved" The non- 
slaveholding mountaineers of Achaia fought against 
6 



122 SLAVEEY IN HISTORY. 

the Romans until they were almost exterminated. 
But Rome conquered, and large numbers of Greeks 
were sold into slavery by the Roman consuls. Paul- 
us Emilius alone sold one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand Macedonians and other Greeks, while the whole 
population of Corinth was sold by Mummius ; and 
Sylla depopulated Athens, the Pirseus and Thebes. 
The Roman rule in Greece and over the Greek world 
was a fierce stimulant to the growth of domestic sla- 
very. The Roman senate and the Roman proconsuls 
especially favored the large slaveholders, since they 
were the fittest persons to tolerate the yoke. The Ro- 
mans helped them to degrade and to enslave as much 
as possible. Rome wanted not freemen in Greece, 
but slaves and obedient slave-drivers; and Roman 
tax-gatherers and the farmers of public revenues sold 
freemen into slavery for debt. Finally, the celebrated 
Cilician pirates desolated Greece, carrying away and 
selling, in Delos, almost the last remnants of the free 
laboring population. 

A small body of free citizens now ruled immense 
masses of slaves. The normal economy of nature 
was thus destroyed, and the depopulation of Greece 
went on rapidly. At the time of Cicero, almost the 
whole of Attica formed the estate of a single slave- 
holder, who also owned other estates in other parts of 
Greece. Many militant slave oligarchs doubtless envy 
that Athenian slaveholder ; at any rate they are doing 
their utmost to bring the Southern States to a condition 
similar to that just depicted in Athens and Greece. 



GREEKS. 123 

During the Peloponnesian wars, insurrections of 
slaves often took place in Attica, especially in the 
mines. But the greatest slave rebellion, as far as his- 
tory has recorded, was under the Roman administra- 
tion. The revolted slaves then seized upon the fortress 
of Sunium, and for a long time fought bravely for 
their freedom. 

The Greeks, as in some degree all the peoples of 
antiquity, considered domestic slavery a social misfor- 
tune to the enslavers, and an accursed fatality inhe- 
rent in human society. They never presented it un- 
der the false colors of a normal and integral social 
element. The striking analogies between the work 
ings of slavery in the ancient world and in the Amer- 
ican republic, show that the disease is everywhere 
and eternally the same, and that it does not ennoble 
either the community or the individual slaveholder, 
as the pro-slavery combatants apodictically assert. 

If in the despotic oriental empires, domestic and 
political slavery at times played into each other's 
hands until they jointly destroyed national life, it was 
domestic slavery, single-handed, which did the work 
in Greece, and particularly in Sparta and Athens. 
Domestic slavery enervated the nation and made it 
an easy prey to foreign conquest. It converted into 
a putrescent mass the once great and brilliant Grecian 
world. 



ROMANS : REPUBLICANS. 125 

XII. 

ROMANS— THE REPUBLICANS. 

AUTHORITIES : 

Corpus Juris, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Nieluhr, Arnold, Sa- 
vigny, Puchta, Mommsen, Jhring, Clinton, Carl Hegel, Zumpt, etc. 

The primitive occupants of the Mediterranean pe- 
ninsula — anciently, and at the present time, called 
Italy — issued from the same Aryan stock as peopled 
Greece. These immigrants, almost from the first mo- 
ment of their arrival, seem to have devoted themselves 
to agriculture, as all the relics still dimly visible in 
prehistoric twilight certify to this fact. Thus, the 
domestic legend of the Samnites makes an ox the 
leader of the primitive colonies, which is only a differ- 
ent version of another tradition, according to which 
Vitulus or Italus— a legendary king, from whom the 
name of "Italy" is derived — brought about among 
his subjects the transition from shepherds to farmers. 
The name Italia, in ancient Latin, signified a country 
full of cattle. The oldest of the Latin tribes has the 
name of Siculi, Sicani, reapers, and another, Opsci, 
or field-laborers. Among the Italians (or Italos, 
Italiots), the legends, creeds, laws, and manners all 
originate in agriculture ; while every one knows the 
use of the plough in the distant background of the 
legendary foundation of Rome. The oldest Roman 
matrimonial rite, the confarreatio, also has its name 



126 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

from rye. With agriculture is primarily connected a 
fixed abode, and thus springs up the love of home 
and family. From agricultural life arises the tribe 
or clan, which is simply a community of individuals 
descending from the same ancestor. In this primitive 
condition the field-labors and domestic occupations 
were performed by various members, first of the 
family, and then of the clan. The servus or servant 
of that epoch was no more a chattel in the Latin agri- 
cultural family and community than was the primitive 
servant in the tent of the patriarchs (see " Hebrews" 
and "Aryas"), or than were the servants of the first 
colonists in New England, Yirginia, or the Carolinas. 
In these primitive households there were no duties 
for a chattel, for from the earliest time agricultural 
and household occupations were as sacred to the yeo- 
men and peasants of Latium and Rome as were the 
domestic hearth, the father, and the family. 

From the left bank of the Tiber to the Yolscian 
mountains, and over the plains of the Campagna, lived 
the Latins — the prisci Latini. They were divided 
into numerous distinct families or clans, which after- 
ward were the generators of the Roman people. The 
region where they first appear, in the most ancient 
times, was therefore settled by separate families, and 
divided into separate townships and villages. These 
clans it was which afterward in " the city" constituted 
the primitive tribus rusticce or rural tribes. 

The RamneS) JRamneis, JRomaneis, JRomani or 
Romans, the founders of Rome, were, in all probabil- 



ROMANS: REPUBLICANS. 127 

ity, bold rovers^ and adventurers from the various 
tribes and villages of Latium. They lived among the 
bushes and groves of the Palatine Mount, and what 
they acquired by depredation was common property. 
These primitive legendary Romans had no use for 
slaves ; they had no mart in which to sell them, and 
it is probable that they neither kidnapped nor en- 
slaved any of the neighboring villagers. Neither 
legend nor history fixes positively how long these 
Ramnenses or Romans persevered in their wild mode 
of life. The legend very soon unites them with other 
settled families, such as the Sabine farmers and peas- 
antry. Then began the specific organized existence 
of the Romans. 

The whole soil of the Roman community constituted 
an ager Romanics or jpublicus. Every citizen, as a 
part of the populus or state, received therefrom a share 
of the public land for his private use. When the 
Romans extended their dominions by subduing the 
neighboring villages and districts, the lands of such 
districts, their pasturages, etc., were incorporated into 
the agerRomanus, and the inhabitants were sometimes 
obliged to settle in Rome or in lands in its vicinity. 
From these originated the plebeians, who, under cer- 
tain conditions, received shares or lots in the agerpub- 
licus or Romanics. The aim of these primitive wars 
was neither to kidnap nor enslave - the subdued tribes, 
nor even to transform them into serfs or Helots, at the 
utmost to make them tributaries. 

To the legendary Romulus were attributed the 



v/ 



v- 



128 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

regulations or laws which forbade tfye massacre or en- 
slavement of the male youth of conquered villages or 
districts, and prohibited also the transformation of the 
conquered lands into pasturages, and provided that they 
should be parcelled into small homesteads for Roman 
citizens. At first two acres, and afterward seven, con- 
stituted such a civic patrimony or homestead. It was 
the abandonment of this law in after ages which gen- 
erated slavery and the ruin of the populace. 

Only the prisoners made on the battle-field and 
counted among the spoils, were sold by the state at 
public auction : sub hasta, " under the spear," and 
sub corona, " the citizen wearing a crown" — to the 
citizens or members of the community. Such pris- 
oner, like all other vended booty, became a mancipiam, 
res mancipia, (from manu caper e, " taken, caught by 
the hand.") Such slaves, in all probability, were not 
numerous. A more prolific source of slavery was the 
right to enslave a debtor for life. The debtor be- 
came a mancipium / and even when the right to en- 
slave him was abolished, the legal formality of catching 
him or touching by the hand, was maintained. 

The power of the father or chief of the household 
— patria potestas — was limitless, in the precincts of 
the house, over both the family and the servants. 
The father, be he patrician or plebeian, could sell hia 
son into slavery, but the right was very seldom used. 
So also, the father had the right of life and death 
over all his family and household. Manumission of 
slaves was common ; it existed from the most ancient 



ROMANS: REPUBLICANS. 129 

times. The slave could also buy his liberty. Subse- 
quently, in the last centuries of the republic and un- 
der the emperors, a slave could be emancipated by 
various positive enactments, and the status of the 
manumitted slave often passed through various gra- 
dations before reaching absolute independence. The 
fortieth book of the Pandects contains several chap- 
ters relating to manumission. 

Sometimes, though rarely, under the kings, tliepub- 
li&slaves — or those of the state, exclusively war pris- 
oners — were employed on public works, or to take 
care of public buildings, or to attend on magistrates 
or priests. The condition of public slaves was prefer- 
able to that of the private slaves ; indeed, the former 
subsequently had the right to dispose by will of half 
of their property. 

The land was tilled by the hands of the senators 
themselves, patricians though they were. If a patri- 
cian {pater) possessed more land than he could culti- 
vate himself, he divided it among small free cultiva- 
tors, or let it out ; and no servile hand desecrated the 
plough. The slaves employed in the house were not 
numerous. 

King Servius Tullius inaugurated a political reform, 
intended to alleviate the condition of the plebeians 
oppressed by the patricians ; and in preparation for it 
he took a census. At that time Rome had eighty-four 
thousand able-bodied citizens between the ages of 
eighteen and sixty years, or a total population of 
about four hundred thousand free persons of all ages 
6* 



130 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

and sexes. To this number must be added the ple- 
beians, who were not yet citizens. The artisans, op- 
eratives, clients and strangers perhaps doubled this 
estimate of the population of Rome, the limits of 
which then stretched from the Tiber to the Anio, in- 
cluding, probably, the lands of Alba, and making in 
all, an .area of about one hundred and twenty or one 
hundred and forty square miles. There would thus 
be more than five thousand five hundred inhabitants 
to a square mile; so that there could have remained 
but very little room for slaves. 

In the first stages of the republic, the patricians con- 
tinually increased their landed estates, and by renting 
these to tenants, they acquired power over the poor 
free laborers, and by lending them money, got a claim 
on their bodies and also on the free yeomen and rus- 
tics. The patricians were hard creditors, and rigor- 
ously availed themselves of their legal rights, and 
their ergastula — caves or vaulted prisons — were al- 
most continually filled with poor debtors. This im- 
poverishment of the free yeomanry increased after 
the terrible devastations perpetrated by the Gauls 
under Brennus. Finally, these financial oppressions 
generated those revolts of the plebeians which termi- 
nated in their obtaining political rights and full citi- 
zenship, together with the jurisprudential reform 
known as the Twelve Tables. 

During the first three or four centuries of the 
republic, the number of slaves who were non- 
debtors was very limited. At the census made in the 



ROMANS: REPUBLICANS. 131 

year of Rome 280, the free population amounted to 
over four hundred and ten thousand persons, and there 
were then only seventeen thousand slaves. 

Few, if any, women were originally enslaved. If 
the nursling of a Roman family often drew its milk 
from the paps of a slave woman, the Roman matron, 
in turn, often gave her breast to the babe of a slave. 

In those early times the slaves were kindly treated ; 
they were regarded rather as members of the family 
than as chattels; they took their meals with their 
masters, and participated in the sacrifices and worship 
of the gods. They were not considered dangerous' 
elements in the household or the state. From that 
early epoch also date certain privileges conceded to 
the slaves — such as their earnings or peculium, which, 
at first established only by common usage, became 
afterward defined and specified by the civil law, in 
which originally the slave was almost entirely ignored. 

Plebeians, proletarians, clients, free artisans — almost 
all of whom were Romans — formed, in the first cen- 
turies, the bulk of the slaves kept in the ergast/ula of 
the patricians. Frequently, when a consul wanted 
soldiers, he would order the creditors to open their 
vaults and disgorge the victims for his service in a 
campaign. And sometimes, though rarely, a consular 
edict quashed the debts and set them free. 

In these earliest times of the Republic the name of a 
proletarius, or procreator of children, was held in honor. 
It was to an increase of the number of its freemen, not 
of its slaves, that the Republic hoped for duration and 



132 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

power. To be called colonics, or a cultivator, was 
also an Lou or to a Roman citizen, whether patrician 
or plebeian, in the times of Cincinnatus, Dentatus, 
and Regulus. Labor was then a high distinction, 
nay it was sacred ; and a slave may almost be con- 
sidered an accident in domestic pursuits. Scaurus, 
then one of the wealthiest and most powerful sen- 
ators, had six slaves, Curius Dentatus one, Regulus 
one, when he commanded the Roman legions against 
Carthage, while Cincinnatus may have had one, but 
most probably none. 

The three hundred patrician Fabii, who left Rome, 
crossed the Tiber and settled at the utmost limits of 
the state, to guard and defend it from the inroads of in- 
vaders — were yeomen, ploughmen, and farmers. And 
without intending to offend or disparage the ennobled 
pro-slavery militants of this age and country, one may 
surely suppose that they have at least a little respect 
for the names and the character of a Dentatus, a Cin- 
cinnatus, and a Regulus. 

However, the patricians and many of the rich ple- 
beians continued uninterruptedly to increase their 
lands in the ager publicus at the cost of the smaller 
yeomen, and that at a time when rural slavery may 
be said to have been in its infancy. And it was the 
object of the celebrated agrarian laws to restore the 
balance between the rich and the poor in the posses- 
sion of the public lands. 

The wars carrried on by Rome with the Greek cities 
in Italy, which were crowded with slaves, and the 



ROMANS: REPUBLICANS. 133 

wars carried on beyond the borders of Italy, were the 
great nurseries of slavery. In such wars free citizens 
were of course killed in vast numbers, and slave war- 
prisoners were brought back to Home in their stead. 
The Punic wars are the turning point in the political 
history and in the social and moral development of 
the Romans. These wars gave the first great stimulus 
both to urbane and rustic slavery. Urbane slaves were 
those employed in houses and villas for personal ser- 
vice ; rustic slaves were those engaged in working the 
estates. 

Rome became more and more a maritime and com- 
mercial emporium, and slaves were now imported as 
merchandise, besides the continually increasing num- 
ber of prisoners of war. Thus Regulus brought over 
twenty thousand Carthaginians of all conditions of 
life, who were sold into slavery. But even at the 
time of the second Funic war, the number of slaves 
of all kinds must have been comparatively very small ; 
for after the terrible defeat at Cannae, the Roman 
senate. ordered the slaves to be armed, and only eight 
thousand were inscribed on the military roll. The 
census taken about that time gave, in all the state, 
two hundred and thirty-seven thousand Roman adult 
citizens, or 1,185,000 free persons of all sexes and 
ages ; making in all, 770,000 Romans, with their Ital- 
ian allies, fit for military duty. 

The victorious Hannibal sold into slavery thousands 
of Roman citizens ; while the final conquest of the 
Carthaginian empire and of Sicily poured many thou- 



134: SLAYEEY m HISTORY. 

sands of slaves into Rome from Africa, from Sicily, 
and from Spain. Thus thirty thousand inhabitants 
of Palermo and twenty-five thousand of Agrigentum, 
were sold into slavery. Among those brought by 
Scipio from Africa, were two thousand artisans whom 
he promised he would not sell, but would keep as 
slaves of the state. 

Henceforth conquests in and out of Italy became 
a social and political necessity for Rome. The spoils 
and lands rapidly increased the wealth of the citizens, 
but principally of the patricians. The habits of lux- 
ury, the contempt of manual and especially agricul- 
tural labor, became general ; and with it the demand 
increased for slaves to work the estates and to cater 
to the other wants of the rich and effeminate Romans. 
So now again, war and rapine, the annexation of 
Mexico, Central America, Cuba and Hayti, are the 
aims of the militant American slaveocracy. 

In course of time Rome became a mart for slaves, as 
great as were Carthage, Corinth, Athens and Syracuse. 
The slave market, like all the other markets in the 
city, was superintended by the sediles. The munici- 
pal regulations compelled the vender to hang a scroll 
around the neck of the slave, containing a description 
of his character, in which his defects were declared 
and his health warranted, especially his freedom from 
epilepsy and violent diseases. The nativity of the slave 
was considered important and was also to be declared. 
When the Romans conquered Asia, the Syrians (who 
belonged to the Caucasian race) were considered to 



ROMANS: REPUBLICANS. 135 

be especially adapted for slavery, just as the negroes 
are at the present day. An incalculable majority of 
the Roman slaves were of the Caucasian or Japhetic y 
race. Where, oh, where, during these almost countless 
centuries, slept the Scriptural curse of Ham \ 

The Hannibalian war was eminently destructive to 
the yeomanry and to their small homes Leads. In- 
ternal domestic economy was shaken from the foun- 
dation and almost entirely destroyed ; the arable lands 
were rapidly turned into wild sheep pastures, with 
wild slaves on them as shepherds ; the patricians no 
longer considered agriculture their first occupation, 
when they found that the slaves of Sicily, Africa, and 
afterward Egypt, were able to nourish both them and 
the people ; and any land still in culture, was worked by 
poor farmers, by colonists and slaves. The term colo- 
nist, also, now acquired a somewhat degraded signifi- 
cation, for they were now but poor proletarians and 
plebeians. Now also came into more common use 
the legal denomination familia rustica, or rural chat- 
tels ; and perhaps at this time, or soon after, originat- 
ed in Rome the proverb : " As many slaves, so many 
enemies" 

In the course of the sixth century, u. c, there burst 
out in great force the antagonism between the free ru- 
ral laborer and the slave. The struggle for life and 
death between the large land and slave holders and the 
yeomanry or freeholders, became more and more ac- 
tive. That which had taken root but slowly in the 
previous centuries, became strengthened by contact 



136 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

with nations of older and more corrupt civilizations. 
The influence of Carthage appeared in the rural econ- 
omy of the Romans, and they began to model their 
agriculture on the Carthaginian slave husbandry. The 
book on " Agriculture,' 1 written by Magon, a Cartha- 
ginian, was translated into Latin by order of the sen- 
ate. The country was rapidly filled with slaves, and 
now originated that reckless cruelty in dealing with 
them which was reflected soon after in the laws. The 
large slaveholders continually enlarged their estates 
by buying or seizing under various pretexts the small 
homesteads. In the times of Publicola and of the 
Twelve Tables, the small freeholders had been driven 
to despair by debts and executions ; but now they 
were ruined and utterly destroyed by slave labor. 
The patricians, who had formerly been mortgagees of 
homesteads, and for whom the freeholder had worked 
to quash his indebtedness, now became large planters. 
Thus in Eome and throughout Italy, as well as in the 
conquered provinces, the slave tide rose higher and 
higher. These provinces constituted the estates of the 
sovereign Roman people; but in their administration 
the patricians applied the same discipline, the same 
iron rod that they held over their slaves. They kept 
the ironed chattels in walled courts and prisons, and 
it became proverbial that "A good mastiff should 
show no mercy to slaves " — a proverb still applicable 
to the bloodhounds of slavery. 

The poor freemen, expelled from the country and 
deprived of employment, crowded more and more into 



ROMANS: REPUBLICANS. 137 

Rome, increasing, to a fearful extent, the Roman pro- 
letariate. For more than three centuries the best men 
of Rome, Crassus, Licinius, Emilianus, Drusus, and 
the Gracchi, made various efforts to arrest, by agra 
rian laws, the destruction of freeholds, first by the 
large estates, and then by slaveholders. These efforts 
were the principal causes of the internal struggles and 
civil wars of the Roman republic, and their failure 
proved the destruction of the Roman world. Scipio 
^Emilianus Africanus prophecied the downfall of lib- 
erty and of the Roman state, if this substitution of 
plantation economy for the old yeomanry and free- 
holds did not cease. About the year 620 u. c, scarcely 
any freeholds for yeomen existed in Etrnria; and 
Plutarch says, " When Tiberius Gracchus went through 
Tuscany to Eumantia he found the country almost de- 
populated, there being scarcely any free husbandmen 
or free shepherds, but tor the most part imported 
slaves. He then first conceived the course of policy," 
etc. An account almost precisely similar of the pres- 
ent condition of Virginia may be found in a speech 
made a few years ago by one of her own sons — one, 
too, of the most ardent upholders of slavery, whether 
as governor of the state, as active politician, or as a 
private citizen. The Roman planter desolated Etruria 
by devoting it to the breeding of cattle ; the Virginian 
desolates her prolific soil and his own manhood by 
devoting them to the breeding of "niggers." But 
here the analogy ceases. The Virginian savior will 
stand in history the antipodes of the Gracchi. 



138 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

The Roman oligarchs, slaveholders and slave- 
traders, baffled the sublime efforts of the Gracchi, 
who attempted not only to preserve but to increase 
the number of freeholders. The Gracchi were mur- 
dered by the oligarchs and the degraded rabble. 
Publius Scipio Nasica and other senators, fomented 
and incited Publius Satureius and Lucius Rufus, 
who, armed with bludgeons or legs of broken chairs, 
struck down and murdered Tiberius Gracchus. With 
similar barbarity Senator Sumner was assaulted in his 
chair of office ; and Senators Toombs and Mason, as 
well as Hons. Keitt and Brooks, had thus their bloody 
prototypes in Rome. The murder of the Gracchi was 
applauded by the degraded Roman rabble; so also 
did the a poor whites" in the South applaud the as- 
sault on Sumner, as well as every other act of sav- 
age violence perpetrated in Washington or elsewhere 
in the interests of slavery. The Roman men and ma- 
trons, however, did not present cudgels of honor to 
Publius Satureius and Lucius Rufus. 

The current of slavery now flowed in unchecked 
course, ever enlarging as it advanced. The free citi- 
zens, deprived of their homes and property, though 
now inspired no more by the antique Roman virtue, 
nevertheless preserved somewhat of their former 
bravery, and the legions extended the Roman sway 
over Greece and Asia. The captives taken from the 
cities and districts were no longer colonized, as for- 
merly, but were sold into slavery like prisoners 
made on the battle-field, and the most vigorous and 



ROMANS: REPUBLICANS. 139 

patriotic portion of the population of other countries 
was sold as chattels. The depopulation of Macedon, 
Epirns, and Greece by the Roman conquerors, has been 
already mentioned. Cato brought large numbers of 
-slaves from Cyprus; Lucullus must have made in- 
numerable thousands in Bithynia and Cappadocia, 
judging from the low price of about two-thirds of a 
dollar per head, for which his human booty was sold, f 
Marius made slaves of more than one hundred and 
fifty thousand Gauls, Kymri and Teutons, and among 
them undoubtedly many Angles and Saxons. 

The exactions, taxes and tributes which the Roman 
oligarchy compelled the conquered kingdoms to pay, 
increased the general poverty, ruin and slavery. The 
men and children of the Sicilians and other nations 
were sold into slavery by the Roman tax-gatherers : 
and when Marius demanded from Nicomede of Bi- 
thynia, as an ally, his contingent of troops, the king 
made answer that all his able-bodied men were sold 
into slavery by the Roman tax and tribute gatherers. 
And even to the present day, in the slave states, they 
sell into slavery free men and women for the costs of 
prison and judgment. 

All these slaves, either in person or cash, centred 
toward Rome, and thus increased the power and re- 
sources of the oligarch slaveholders, while at the 
same time they incontinently devoured the domestic 
economy of the state ; and the impoverished and home- 
less freemen took their revenge on the oligarchs under 
Marius, father and son, and under Cinna ; while Sylla, 



140 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

in turn, was the avenging sword of the oligarchs and 
e .aveholders. In his time slaveholders were composed 
principally of wealthy ancient patricians and new 
rich men or cavaliers, who together constituted the oli- 
garchy of capital: just as now, the " old families," as 
they are called, of the slave states combine with the 
new plantation-buyers, overseers, traders, etc., and 
jointly form the slave-driving oligarchy. 

Sylla shed in torrents the blood of those who dared 
to hope for a reform from Marios and the reduction 
of the power of the slaveholders. He was their soul 
and their representative, and was guilty of every cru- 
elty to uphold the interest, not of Rome, but of the 
egotistical oligarchy ; just, again, as in the slave states, 
the diminutive would-be Syllas are ready to sacrifice 
every thing to maintain slavery, even to the destruc- 
tion of society and the republic ; while the public 
spirit of a free state makes every freeman seek his 
own welfare in the general good. 

In the time of Sylla, Italy contained about thirteen 
millions of slaves ; and slave insurrections, both there 
and in Sicily, succeeded each other almost uninter- 
ruptedly. History has recorded some of them, and 
immortalized the name of the heroic Spartacus. The 
insurrection in Sicily also, under Ennus, lasted more 
than four years, and cost the lives of nearly a million 
of victims. 

Slave-breeding was not yet conducted on a large 
scale. The advice of Cato the Grumbler, was against 
its permission ; and he obliged his slaves to pay him 



KOMANS: REPUBLICANS. 141 

a tax from their peculium whenever they cohabited 
with the other sex. 

The large amount of grain imported from conquered 
countries cultivated by slaves, brought about a com- 
petition which soon destroyed the homesteads of 
the yeomanry, and transformed the fertile Campagna 
and almost the whole of Italy into a vast cattle pas- 
turage. . ' 

It has been already mentioned (see " Greeks") that 
during the post-Alexandrian dissolution of Greece 
and of the east, Cilician piracy was rampant in the 
eastern part of the Mediterranean. Until Pompey 
destroyed this piracy, it had its centres and markets 
in Crete, in Rhodes, and even in Alexandria ; but the 
principal mart was in Delos, where sometimes ten 
thousand slaves changed masters in a single day. 
The Roman merchants were the best patrons of the 
Cilician pirates ; and recent developments show that 
our slave-planters are again beginning to be willing 
customers to the Americo- African pirates and slave- 
traders. In general, wherever the capitalist-slave- 
holder is permitted to develop his supremacy in a 
state, both man and society are materially and moral- 
ly ruined. Thus it was with Rome and Italy at that 
epoch : and so also, the American slave states move 
on rapidly in the orbit from which Rome whirled into 
the abyss. 

In the Mithridatic and Asiatic wars, Pompey en- 
slaved more than two millions of Asiatics ; and accor- 
ding to the census made under him, Italy contained 



142 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

at that time only 450,000 able-bodied citizens capable 
of military duty, or a total free population of about 
2,200,000. It is also asserted that Caesar enslaved at 
least one million of Gauls. In the age of Cicero only 
about two thousand citizens of Rome possessed land- 
ed property, but with it they owned legions of chat- 
tels ; and Cicero — a parvenu without manhood, first 
the accessory and then the betrayer of Cataline — 
maintained that only slaveholders could be considered 
respectable. 

After the patricians were restored to power by Sylla, 
they found that war and hereditary slavery did not 
supply the necessary quantity of slaves ; and they 
consequently began to kidnap and enslave poor free- 
men — even their Roman fellow-citizens. To rob and 
take violent possession of the remaining freeholds be- 
came now a matter of course. In the time of Cicero 
nearly all handicrafts in the city, which had once been 
in the hands of freemen and clients, were carried on by 
slaves, either directly for their masters, or indirectly 
by being hired out to others. It became more and 
more common to hire out skilful slaves and to train 
them up with the view of receiving the revenues of 
their proficiency. It was then just as it is now ; for 
then Italy, as now the slave states, was owned by 
slave-drivers, worked by slaves, and guarded by heart- 
less overseers and bloodhounds. 

In the beginning of his career, Caesar tried to create 
a free yeomanry by distributing the public domain 
among the poor free citizens and the disabled soldiers. 



ROMANS: REPUBLICANS. 143 

After the victory over the oligarchs and Pompey, he 
colonized eighty thousand of the proletarians of Rome. 
But it was forever too late ; and besides, the oligarchs 
and slaveholders opposed his attempts. Scarcely any 
free laborers existed ; the domain of the slave-driver 
was universal ; indeed it was such an epoch as is now 
again so ardently desired by small senators, would-be 
statesmen, and the whole vanguard of the knight- 
errant army of chattelhood. Freeholds disappeared 
from Italy, and almost from the world, with the ex- 
ception perhaps of the valleys in the Apennines and 
the Abruzzi. The region from the modern Civita Yec- 
chia across Tusculum to Boiee and Naples, where once 
a dense population of Latin and Italian free yeoman- 
ry ploughed the soil and reaped the harvest, was now 
covered with splendid villas for the masters and with 
ergastula for their chattels. But the proud inhabi- 
tants of the villas, the rich patricians and slaveholders, 
were themselves soon to become political slaves. Cen- 
tral Italy and the lands around Rome which nursed 
the armies, and from which were recruited the con- 
querors of the Carthaginians, Numidians and the pha- 
lanxes of Macedonia, was now a waste, depopulated 
solitude, owned by a few wealthy planters. 

Domestic slavery now brought Rome into the con- 
dition to which it had reduced Greece and the orien- 
tal world centuries before. The Italy of Yarro and 
of Cicero resembled the Greece of Polybius, Car- 
thage on the eve of its fall, or Asia as found by Alex- 
ander. What will he the full and ripe crop of this 



144 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

dragon-teeth-seed in America? Whenever domestic 
slavery is planted and takes enduring root in a country, 
even the beauty of nature is ravaged and destroyed. 
Do the chattel-cabins enliven the landscape of Yirginia 
or beautify the coast of Carolina? The living rill or 
river gloriously reflects a thousandfold the rays and 
colors of light, but stagnant sewers are everywhere 
alike fetid and abominable. 

During the epoch when slavery flourished and the 
Roman republic fell into decay, those terrible cruel- 
ties toward slaves which history records, and .which 
even now strike the mind with horror, came into 
vogue. Slaves, chained in gangs, worked in the fields ; 
at night they were crowded together in prisons ; a 
Greek letter was branded with a hot iron into their 
cheeks, and other unmentionable cruelties were prac- 
tised. Still, even then, they were comparatively well 
fed, as indeed are all useful and submissive beasts. 
The Roman fabulist Phoedrus, in his tale of " The 
Dog and the Wolf" tells how this good feeding was 
regarded by the nobler minds of that demoralized 
epoch. 

After the time of Cato the breeding of slaves be- 
came more general, and one woman would frequently 
nurse several babies, while their mothers were other- 
wise employed. This became even more common, 
however, in a subsequent epoch. 

Slaves were used for all purposes in the household 
of the rich Roman oligarch. They performed the 
highest as well as the basest labors ; they were even 



ROMANS: REPUBLICANS. 145 

doctors, architects, literati, readers and amanuenses ; 
they exercised in some degree the function of printing 
in. our day, as by their labor manuscripts were copied 
and libraries formed. 

How domestic slavery degraded the Roman slave- 
holder is evidenced by the direct statements of histo- 
ry, as well as by the descriptions of manners in the 
comedies, etc., which have reached us from that epoch. 
In proportion as the old Roman spirit and courage 
declined, did violence and rowdyism increase. Among 
the various deleterious influences of slavery on slave- 
holders, also, two which are very noticeable at that 
remote time, may again, after the lapse of ages, be ob- 
served under our own eyes: slavery either emascu- 
lates the slaveholder physically and mentally, and 
thus renders him cruel from effeminacy ; or else makes 
him rude and reckless, and full of a coarse and savage 
ferocity. 

The Roman oligarchs had all the polish reflected 
from general culture covering the most depraved 
minds ; and this told upon their politics as well as 
upon their domestic economy. As early as the time 
of Jugurtha, nearly all the senators were venal ; and 
subsequently, those who preserved individually some 
of the better Roman characteristics, became even 
more rare. Such an one, toward the end of the re- 
public, was Sextus Roscius, whom history mentions 
for his good treatment of his bondmen. Whenever a 
special class of society becomes anywhere predomi- 
nant, a special type of character is formed as the stand- 
7 



146 SLAVERY m HISTORY. 

ard of honor, which, however, is generally quite dif 
ferent from the true standard of an honest man or an 
upright citizen. But, false criterions aside, the Slave 
States may, and undoubtedly do, possess many honor- 
able planters and citizens, as Carroll of Carrollton 
or Aiken and Preston of South Carolina : but none 
of these men give tone or character to the manners 
or the laws ; their influence is not permitted in Con- 
gress or the state legislatures, nor are their opinions 
reflected in the press or in the sham literature and 
science of their section. Bat the customs and man- 
ners which now prevail, the laws enacted, the utter- 
ances of statesmen, the condition of science and lit- 
erature, and the statements of the current press, con- 
stitute the evidence from which the social condition 
of the nation is to be judged now, and the historic 
evidence from which it will be judged by future gen- 
erations. 

The slaveholding oligarchy triumphed over Marius 
and Sertorius as it triumphed over the Gracchi. And 
the Roman republic expired composed of slaveholders, 
capitalists, and beggars. The fury of the indignant 
and impoverished people carried Csesar to power over 
the carcasses and the ruins of the oligarchy, which long 
before had reduced the liberty and the name of the 
Roman people to a sham and a mockery. Domestic 
slavery for several centuries undermined the Roman 
republic, and its corrosive action increased with the 
most brilliant periods of conquest, just as the human 
body, though gnawed internally by a chronic disease, 



ROMANS: REPUBLICANS. 147 

may exhibit, for a longer or shorter period, all the 
appearances of health and vigor. Oligarchs, slave- 
holders, and capitalists destroyed a republic founded 
by intelligent and industrious agriculturists, yeomen, 
and freeholders. 

More than one point of analogy exists between the 
Roman and American republics. Independent and 
intelligent small farmers, with artisans, mechanics, 
etc., were the founders of American independence. 
And the free states have not only preserved but ele- 
vated to a higher social and political significance the 
original characteristics of her existence ; and the re- 
proaches hurled by the militant pro-slavery oligarchs 
against the free farmers and operatives in the fields 
and workshops of the north are sacrilegious to liberty 
and light. Even so the prince of darkness curses the 
god of day ! 



ROMANS: POLITICAL SLAVES. 149 

XIII. 

KOMANS— POLITICAL SLAVES. 

It was an easy matter to engraft despotism npon a 
society morally, politically, and economically mined 
by the slaveholding oligarchy. The Caesars and the 
emperors inaugurated and developed it, and at that 
time nothing else would have suited Home. Domestic 
slavery had destroyed the republican spirit, and the 
vitality of ancient republican institutions. The political 
condition of the empire — that world-ruling despotism 
— under the Caesars and the emperors'* was the legiti- 
mate result of chattelhood and of oligarchism. Po- 
litical and domestic slavery now went hand in hand, 
both of them supreme over man and society. 

During the reign of the six Caesars, rural as well as 
urban slavery rapidly began to be reduced to method 
and to legal forms. Augustus tried to modify some- 
what the cruel treatment of the slaves : he abolished, 
for instance, the custom of branding their cheeks with 
a hot iron, and ordered instead that they should wear 
metallic collars. It came into vogue, also, that a 
woman who had given birth to three children was free 
from hard labor the rest of her life ; if she had four 
she became wholly free. 

* The Caesars proper end with Nero, and then begin the emperors of 
various families and even nationalities. \ 



150 SLAVERY m HISTORY. 

The slave traffic was very active over all the im- 
perial Roman world during the whole period of its 
existence, and was the most lucrative branch of 
commerce. It was also strictly adjusted by police 
regulations. 

Augustus likewise made efforts to morally re- 
invigorate, so to speak, the decaying oligarchy ; but 
this attempt was even more unsuccessful than the 
former. Every person who is even slightly acquaint- 
ed with history must be familiar with the absolute 
degradation of the oligarchs, capitalists, and rich 
slaveholders of imperial Borne. Tiberius despised 
them and tyrannized over them with a cold-blooded 
and contemptuous cruelty only equalled by the man- 
ner in which they crushed their chattels, or the pop- 
ulace of Rome, whom they had impoverished and de- 
graded. For then, as for centuries before, the oligarchy 
looked with as much contempt on the working-classes 
as the modern slave-drivers do on " greasy mechanics." 
But, in the eye of history and humanity, it is the 
" greasy mechanics' 7 and " small-fisted farmers" of the 
free states who are the glorious lights which redeem 
the dark side of American polity as embodied in 
the slave-driving chivalry. 

In fact, the Boman oligarchs were far more degraded 
than their chattels. " Turjpis adulatio Senatus" said 
Tacitus ; and the names of Druses, Germanicus, Bri- 
tannicus, Chasrea, Trasea, and a few others, can never 
redeem the infamy of a whole community. 

The numbers of slaves owned by the wealthy, was, 



ROMANS: POLITICAL SLAVES. 151 

as it were, proportionate to their degradation. Athe- 
nseus says that some rich men had from ten to twenty 
thousand slaves, and the statement is confirmed by 
Seneca. Csecilius Isidorus, a rich jparticulier living 
.under Augustus, lost a great part of his fortune in 
the civil wars, and yet left by will 4116 chattels ; 
Elius Proculus, on his estates in Liguria, had two 
thousand slaves able to bear arms ; Scaurus, a wealthy 
senator, owned 4116 chattels, exclusive of shepherds 
and tillers ; Eumolpus, a simple citizen — not one of 
the oligarchs or F. F. Y.'s of that time, but rather a 
parvenu— had so large a number of slaves on his es- 
tates in Numidia, that with an army of them he could 
have stormed and taken the city of Carthage, which, 
although reduced from its former grandeur, was still 
among the first cities of Africa. Under Nero, half 
of Africa was owned by six slaveholders : Nero 
slaughtered them and inherited their estates. 

Such was the rapidly developed internal condition 
of the Roman state when Pliny dolefully exclaimed : 
" Latifundi perdidere Italiam moxque provincias :" 
" Large extended estates (cultivated by slaves), ruined 
Italy, and soon after the provinces," as even Spain 
and Gaul were quickly devoured by the large slave- 
holders. 

The condition and treatment of the slaves inspired 
pity even in a Claudius. He prohibited the custom 
of starving to death the old and disabled slaves, who 
had generally been exposed on an island in the Tiber, 
upon which was a temple of Esculapius. By the 



152 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

Claudian edict, such exposition was equivalent to 
emancipation. Even E~ero had some pity for the 
slaves, though he had none for their masters. The 
emperors were terrified at the increased ravages of 
slavery, which spread in continually wider and wider 
circles over Gaul and Spain as well as in Africa and 
in the east. Edicts were issued by several emperors 
— as Adrian and the Antonines — designed to stay the 
spread of slavery and alleviate the condition of the 
chattels. These edicts encouraged manumissions either 
absolute and immediate, or gradual, and conferred 
the same municipal rights as were enjoyed by the 
enfranchised. The latifundia, or large estates, never- 
theless, still increased their size ; and the condition 
and relations of landed property required new laws 
and new legal definitions, which were gradually in- 
troduced into the jus civile. First in order were the 
common usages of the people, and then the legaliza- 
tion of their customs. Thus it is not till toward the 
end of the second ■ Christian century that there are 
found in the Koman law definitions of slaves as per- 
sons attached perpetually to the soil. But their classi- 
fication was so complicated, that it becomes difficult, 
if not impossible, to define distinctly the various 
grades, or to exhibit clearly the features in which one 
differs from another. The necessities of the imperial 
treasury were probably the 'cause of such divisions as 
those of adscriptitii, censiti, jperpetui, conditionales, co- 
loni, inquilini — both of old republican origin — sim- 
plices, originarii, homologi, trihutari, adcttcti glebce, 



ROMANS: POLITICAL SLAVES. 153 

• 

agricolce, aratores, rustici adores, etc. In course of 
time, also, all these names were merged under the 
general denomination of serfs, which again assumed 
various degrees of oppression and servitude. 

Augustus is proverbially said to have pacified the 
world ; and indeed, with few exceptions^ the Roman 
empire enjoyed internal peace during the first two 
Christian centuries. But under Claudius, during the 
war with Tiridates of Pontus, the entire population 
of some of the captured cities was sold into slavery, 
as were also one hundred thousand Jews, when Jeru- 
salem fell under Yespasian. There were now, how- 
ever, no more rich cities or cultivated countries to be 
conquered, no peoples to be enslaved by millions, 
as there had been under the republic ; wars now 
were waged only on the outskirts of the empire, and 
generally with barbarous nations. Prisoners of war, 
captives and subdued barbarians, were no longer sold 
into slavery, but the emperors colonized the waste 
lands with them. They thus attempted to repeople 
Italy and the provinces, and to revive the ancient 
mode of rural economy, as also to increase the rev- 
enue of the imperial treasury. Such colonizations 
were frequent after the time of Marcus Aurelius. 
But all this could not stop the growth of the social 
cancer. Chattelhood, encouraged, as will be shown 
by political slavery and taxations, was wildly ram- 
pant, and overleaped every barrier to its progress 
which the emperors attempted to raise. 

During the whole epoch of the growth and maturi- 
7* 



154 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

ty of domestic slavery in Rome, no one of her mor- 
alists, philosophers, poets, priests or satirists ever 
preached or sang of the idyllic beauties of slavery; 
none of her statesmen considered it as the foundation, 
corner-stone or cement of society or of the empire, 
or even as "ennobling"* to the slaveholder, and ora- 
tions and discourses in exaltation of human bondage 
were unknown. Pliny, Seneca and Plutarch only 
spoke of it in extenuating language. 

The Horn an jurisconsult of the better times of 
the empire crystallized into legal form the sense 
of justice and equity inherent in the Roman, nay, 
in human society. He expounded the law for the 
de facto existing society, and therefore generally in 
favor of the owner, slaveholder, etc., and against 
the thing, the res, which was the chattel. The ob- 
ject of the Roman law was only to regulate exist- 
ing relations, and such was domestic slavery. But 
with "all its unbending severity, the Roman law, 
through the conscientious voice of the Roman juris- 
consult, declared slavery a condition, "qua quis do- 
minio alieno contra naturam subiicitur" and rarely 
missed an occasion to favor the slave, to alleviate his 
status, and to facilitate his emancipation. No clause 
or decision of the law re-enslaved, in any case, the 
chattel once emancipated. Even if a will provided for 
the emancipation of a slave in terms like these : " I 
will and command that my slave A becomes free ; but 
upon condition that he live with my son, and if he re- 
* See speech of Senator Mason of Virginia. 



ROMANS: POLITICAL SLAVES. 155 

fuses or neglects to do this he returns to slavery, the 
law decided, that " A, being emancipated by the first 
paragraph of the will, cannot be re-enslaved by the 
subsequent conditional paragraph ; therefore A is free, 
and he may or may not fulfil the condition." 

The child also followed the condition of the mother 
when born from illicit intercourse, nisi lex specialis 
alius inducit. If the father was a slave and the moth- 
er a free woman, the child was free, quia non debet 
calamitas matris ei noeeri qui in utero est — "the mis- 
fortune of the mother shall not bear on the product 
of the womb." A change of the status of the mother 
from liberty to slavery during pregnancy was always 
construed favorably to the child, who thus might be 
born free if the mother was free for even the shortest 
time during the period of pregnancy. 

Under the emperor^, freemen began to sell them- 
selves into slavery — a thing unknown during the ex- 
istence of the republic. But a freeman wbo sold 
himself into slavery, if afterward manumitted, could 
not become again a full citizen. And whoever was 
once emancipated could on no pretence be re-enslaved, 
under penalty of death. 

Modern pro-slavery legislators and jurisconsults 
boldly overthrow all these Roman ideas of justice 
and equity. 

The law established various just causes for emanci- 
pation. Among these were, natural relationships, as 
children, brothers, sisters, mothers, cousins, grand- 
parents, etc., when slaves ; and whoever ad impudi- 






156 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

citiam turpemque violationem servos compellat, lost 
his potestas, or power, over the slave. 

These facilities for emancipation operated principal- 
ly in favor of the urban chattels, or those of the 
household proper, and also rural overseers, but were 
rarely applied to the rural slaves ; consequently, dur- 
ing the most brilliant period of the existence of the 
empire, the cities were filled with enfranchised slaves 
of various kinds and various nations. The country, 
too, was altogether abandoned by the slaveholders, 
who lived and rioted in the imperial city. Most of 
these emancipated slaves, as also, indeed, many of the 
free-born citizens, finally lost their liberty by the op- 
eration of those causes which, notwithstanding eman- 
cipations and state colonizations, continually increased 
the latif undia or large estates, and transformed into 
bondmen the freeholders as well as those who rented 
land from the state or from private individuals. 

The* civil administration of the Roman empire, 
heathen and Christian, down to its last agonies in 
Constantinople, may be very briefly summed up: it 
was fiscality. Every administrative measure aimed 
at replenishing the imperial exchequer. The imperial 
treasury was bottomless, and its owners cold, rapa- 
cious, cruel and insatiable. All the colonizations of 
free laborers had for their single aim but to increase 
the income of the state ; and tributes and taxations 
of every conceivable kind were imposed, first upon 
the provinces, and in course of time, on Italy itself. 
These, of course, were principally supplied by the la- 



EOMANS: POLITICAL SLAVES. 157 

boring classes in the cities and on the lands. The ra- 
pacity of the state was heightened also by the indi- 
vidual greed of the magistrates, from the prefects 
down to the meanest military or political official or 
tax-gatherer ; indeed, locusts more destructive than the 
Koman officials never devoured the fruits of toil or 
the accumulations of industry. These fiscal measures 
and lawless extortions, fostered chattelhood almost as 
much as wars and conquests had formerly done. 

The inquilini and coloni of the last century of the 
republic were free, rent-paying farmers (who paid the 
rent in money), or free laborers. When, after the time 
of Sylla, the republican oligarchs partially enslaved 
these farmers, the rent had to be paid in kind, in sign 
of dependence, if not of absolute bondage. The col- 
onists settled by the emperors also had to pay tribute 
and submit to various other servitudes ; and thus the 
once free colonists were, by a slow but uninterrupted 
process, transformed into bondmen, serfs and slaves. 
As in the last days of the republic, so under Augustus 
and his successors, the free yeoman or colonist, in 
order to avoid being violently expelled from his home- 
stead and shut up in the ergastulurn with the chattels, 
frequently sold himself and his little property, on 
certain conditions, to the rich and powerful slave- 
holder, and thus secured patronage and protection. 
In proportion as exaction, oppression and lawlessness 
increased under the emperors, so also did the forced 
or voluntary submission of colonists to influential 
slaveholders. As the imperial tax-gatherer was wont 



158 



SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 



to sell the children of the poor for tax or tribute, the 
peasant often preferred to become a slave in order to 
obtain protection from his master, who became re- 
sponsible to the treasury for the taxes of the bond- 
man and his lands. Frequently whole villages of 
colonists thus gave up their rights for the sake of 
patronage and protection. 

The exchequer had a roll inscribed with the names 
of all the colonists on the domains belonging to the 
state, the cities, or to private individuals. From this 
census for taxation was derived the legal designation, 
and afterward the condition of adscriptus. And the 
imperial government, whose sole object was to gather 
taxes and have responsible tax-payers, had little if 
any objection to this transformation of colonists and 
their homesteads into the bondmen of the rich. The 
change was not made at once by any special law,* 
but was brought about by the slow progress of social 
decomposition. When the serfdom of the colonists 
first became an object of jurisprudence — a little before 
and under Theodosius — it had already existed as a 
fact; and ex facto nascitur jus was an old axiom of 
the civil law. By and by slaves proper — that is, mov- 
able chattels, not persons attached to the soil — both in 
the city and on the lands, were taxed on the planta- 
tion roll; and Constantine prohibited the sale of 

chattels from one province to another, most probably 

i 

* So to-day no law creates or gives a definition of " sand-hillers," 
" cla3 r -eaters," and other brutalized poor whites in the South, who are 
rapidly approaching slavery. 



ROMANS: POLITICAL SLAVES. 159 

with the view of facilitating their control by the tax- 
gatherer. 

Rapacious taxation, the first outgrowth of imperial 
despotism which was originated by the slaveholders, 
forced into the .grip of the oligarch all that remained 
of free soil and independent labor, or what was in- 
tended to be such by the colonizing emperors. The 
same cause also disorganized the ancient municipal 
regime in the cities of Italy and throughout the 
Roman world. 

The curia of Italian cities, and afterward of all 
other cities privileged with Italian law, constituted 
the body politic of each municipality. The most in- 
fluential and wealthy citizens, therefore, were curiales / 
next to them were municipes, common burghers, small 
traders, etc. ; then clients, free plebeian proletarians, 
the enfranchised, etc. The decurions or city senate, 
and other dignitaries called patrons, protectors, etc., 
administered the affairs of the city ; these and all other 
offices were light and honorable while the cities were 
flourishing, as in the first two centuries of the empire ; 
but even then, various legal immunities released cu- 
riales from performing public municipal service. Du- 
ring the peace enjoyed by the Roman world in the 
early times of the empire, the taxes, tolls, excises, 
venalicium, etc., imposed on Italianized cities, were 
moderate. These cities were then rich ; they accu- 
mulated and loaned capital ; they owned slaves and ex- 
tensive domains. By means of their slaves they erected 
those public edifices and monuments whose splendor 



160 SLAVERY IN HISTORY 

rivalled those of Rome and whose ruins are still in 
many places preserved ; and the administration of the 
revenues and the honors of the city were in the con- 
trol of rich oligarchs and slaveholders. The same 
accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, existed 
in the cities as in the country, as the same oligarchs 
generally lived in the city, and indeed necessarily be- 
longed to some municipium; for in the Roman world 
the whole political and civic status was exclusively 
embodied in and bestowed on the city ; and the coun- 
try, as such, had no political or civil significance. 

Thus, even during the most brilliant periods, the 
numerous free persons in the cities became more and 
more impoverished, and lived by panem et circenses, 
as in Rome. Under this deceitful glitter, the dis- 
ease slowly undermined the prosperity of the cities, 
and the first shock revealed the terrible reality. 
Soon fiscal rapacity seized hold of every thing both 
in the Italian and Italianized cities. Not only the 
poorer classes but even the wealthy began to feel 
it. One after another the cities lost their domains 
and their treasure, and thus lost the means to sus- 
tain their internal administration. With the grow- 
ing imperial rapacity increased also the danger and 
the difficulties of public office, as the decurions and 
other officials were responsible to the imperial treas- 
ury for all the taxes and imposts levied upon the city. 
The rich men, patrons, etc., now used extensively their 
right of exemption from office, and excused themselves 
from public service in proportion as the fiscal pressure 



ROMANS: POLITICAL SLAVES. 161 

increased, and as they found it more lucrative to profit 
from general calamities than to attempt to avert them. 
Besides, taxes for the central exchequer were to be im- 
posed and levied as well as taxes for the local adminis- 
tration of the cities. All this finally almost entirely 
crushed the impoverished burghers, and in the second 
century large numbers of burghers were inscribed in 
the curia. First the poorer shopkeepers, artisans, and 
small property holders, and then almost all the viles, 
with the exception of the infames — that is, those who at 
any time had undergone any infamous condemnation — 
became curiales. Taxes on lands, houses, and slaves, 
and also on persons (per capita), increased almost 
daily, and were imposed under various guises and 
new names. All handicraftsmen, tradesmen, and 
merchants, had to pay special taxes, and the poorest 
plebeian had to pay a capitatio or illatio. When the 
cities had thus been reduced to poverty, and were ob- 
liged to tax themselves heavily to sustain their exist- 
ence, the severest of all labor was to be a city official, 
and every one tried to avoid public honors, as even to 
be a curialis was considered a heavy calamity. The 
surplus of the poor free population, no longer sup- 
ported by the magistrates or decuriones, abandoned the 
cities and became colonists on the imperial domains, on 
the remaining city domains, or on private lands ; and 
there sank deeper and deeper into the mire of slavery. 
Soon the curiales began to follow the plebeians, in 
order to escape from their privileges and dignities. 
With this, however, an imperial edict interfered, and 



162 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

small proprietors, coriales, etc., were prohibited from 
selling their property. The eventual acquirer of such 
property was made ipso facto curial, and responsible 
for both past and current taxes, and the other exactions 
and servitudes imposed. The law put various other 
impediments on the personal liberty of poor but tax- 
able curiales : they became bondmen of the state or 
of their own municipality ; they could not change 
their residence, and suffered innumerable annoyances. 
The curiales, thus goaded, often preferred even the 
hateful military service on the utmost frontiers of the 
empire: they voluntarily entered the legions, in 
order to be exempted from taxation and the grip of 
the imperial and municipal tax-gatherer. More of 
them, however, chose rather to seek patrons, and be- 
came bondmen to the rich, the slaveholders, and 
exempted persons, giving both themseves and their 
property to their protectors. Thus frequently the im- 
poverished descendants of former honoratiores became 
first bondmen and then slaves. During that long 
epoch of grinding oppression and taxation, the divi- 
sion and subdivision of the community into classes 
and grades originated. This classification was based 
on pursuits and occupations, and also according to the 
imposts levied on each class, from the magnate — as 
the rich social successors of the oligarchs were now 
called — down to the lowest laborer and chattel. 
Finally, the whole property in the Roman world — 
the country, the city, the lands, houses, and slaves — 
was centred in the hands of a few magnates, who 



EOMANS: POLITICAL SLAVES. 163 

owned incalculable numbers of colonists, bondmen, 
serfs, and chattels. 

The famous Roman legions were recruited from yeo- 
men, plebeians, workmen and colonists ; in one word, 
from the free population. When freemen diminished, 
foreigners and barbarians were hired and enrolled. 
Sylla's military murderers were in great part Spanish 
Celts; and after Sylla and Marius, foreigners entered 
more and more into the composition of the Roman 
armies. Caligula had a kind of body-guard composed 
of Germans ; and soon all the nations conquered by 
Rome were represented, not only in the armies, but- 
even under the imperial canopy. Then arose the in- 
testine wars for imperial power carried on by pre- 
tenders, each proclaimed by some province or legion. 
These wars resulted in slaughter, devastation, ruin 
and universal misery ; and thus enlarged the number 
of slaves, and powerfully revived the slave traffic, 
which survived the downfall of heathenism and the 
Roman world. 

Domestic slavery, acting through long centuries, 
brought about a thoroughly diseased and depraved 
condition of society, which, in turn, reacted upon its 
producing cause, exacerbating and intensifying it. 
The result was, that domestic slavery quite overmas- 
tered the ancient Roman world. At the melancholy 
period of Rome's disruption, the high-souled, patriotic 
citizen — that compact and columnar type of character 
— had become quite extinct, and in his place were 
large slave-owners, slave-drivers, and slave-traders. 
The masters and protectors of Rome were foreigners 



164: SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

and barbarians. The slaveholders could not defend 
the empire, and beneath them was a degraded popula- 
tion of so-called freemen, and millions of serfs and 
slaves, all of them without a spark of love for their 
country, and destitute even of material incitements to 
urge them to defend their homes or uphold the existing 
condition of society. None of them had any interest 
to sustain their slaveholding masters or the fiscality of 
the empire ; and at times the lower classes, the slaves 
especially, even joined the invaders. Thus, when 
Alaric appeared before Rome, over forty thousand 
slaves joined his camp. 

Such was the condition of the Roman world and 
its western provinces, Spain and Gaul, when the av- 
alanche from the north burst upon it with its torrent 
of invaders. The oligarchic slaveholders, having 
destroyed the republic, transmitted to the Caesars a 
society which had through their means become utterly 
degenerate and depraved. The emperors, in their 
turn, transmitted to the new era a world putrescent 
with domestic slavery. Often does a virus eat its 
way so deeply into a healthy organism, as to change 
its very character and the conditions of its existence. 
Then the morbid disorganization becomes an appar- 
ently normal condition, until finally life is altogether 
extinct. Such was the effect of chattelhood on the 
Roman world, and especially on Italy, which was the 
soul and centre of the system. Nor does it require any 
great apprehension to see how the tragic analogy holds 
in the case of the Southern States of the North Amer- 
ican confederacy. 



CHKISTIANITY. 165 



XIV. 

CHRISTIANITY: ITS CHURCHES AND 
CREEDS. 

AUTHORITIES : 

General History, Ecclesiastical History, Councils, Bulls, etc. 

Christianity appeared for the purpose of effecting 
a regeneration in man's moral nature ; this necessarily 
included also his social regeneration. 

The primitive Christians, apostles, and martyrs, by 
their words, actions, and death, taught charity, broth- 
erly love, and equality before God ; and thus slowly 
but powerfully undermined slavery. They consoled 
in every possible way their lowly and suffering 
brethren, and tried to inspire the slaveholders with 
feelings of charity and benevolence toward their 
bondmen ; but as the apostles did not attack any 
prevalent social or political evil, nay, even seemed 
to countenance, by their silent recognition or their 
advice, the existing imperial despotism, so, for ob- 
vious reasons, they could not directly attack domestic 
slavery nor proclaim universal emancipation. They 
preached to slaves and slaveholders, made converts 
from both, and considered and treated both as equal 
before God and the law. The few words of apostolic 
consolation which have been transmitted to us as re- 



166 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

f erring especially to chattels, logically and morally con- 
tain a condemnation of slavery, for it is only misfortune 
and evil that inspire pity or require consolation. So 
that the apostles and primitive Christians, by advising 
slaves to bear their yoke patiently, thereby proclaimed 
slavery to be an evil, like any of the sufferings, losses, 
or misfortunes of life. 

When, under Constantine, Christianity was embod- 
ied in a national ecclesiasticism, the Church watched 
more directly over the condition of the slaves. In 
various ways it tried to alleviate their condition and 
effect their manumission ; and this it urged the more 
earnestly as the Christians belonged mostly to the 
poorer classes, and also numerous serfs and slaves. 

But the Church had now become a material fact, 
and henceforward, beside its legitimate moral aims, it 
had also worldly and selfish desires. It received impe- 
rial and private donations, became a large proprietor 
of lands, and therefore also a holder of slaves and serfs. 
It could therefore take no distinct interest in emanci- 
pation, but nevertheless still continued to inspire slave- 
holders with a milder spirit, and tried to prevent, as 
far as possible, the slave traffic, at least in Christian 
chattels. 

None of the apostles, fathers, confessors, or martyrs 
of the Church ever affirmed slavery to be a moral and 
divine institution, or ever attempted to justify it in 
any way. These primitive Christians and holy 
fathers never once thought to refer to. the curse of 
Noah as a justification of slavery. The Biblical story 



CHRISTIANITY. 16' 



of ^"oah and his curse was first dragged into this 
question by the feudalized mediseval clergy, to justify 
the enslavement, not of black Africans but of white 
Europeans, among whom, undoubtedly, were the an- 
cestors of many blatant American supporters of the 
divine origin, on Biblical authority, of slavery. 

When the Roman empire was broken in pieces by 
the northern invaders, the body of the Roman Church 
and clergy belonged to the subdued and enslaved race. 
The Franks, Korthmen, and Anglo-Saxons were then 
altogether heathen ; but many of the invaders — as the 
Visigoths and Ostrogoths, the Vandals, Burgundians, 
Heruli, and Longobards — were Christians ; but, being 
Arians (Unitarians), they were enemies of the Trini- 
tarians, and treated the Roman clergy as they did the 
rest of the subdued population. The Roman clergy, 
however, finally succeeded in superseding the Arian 
dogmas by their own, and they then constituted the 
sole expounders of Christian doctrine. Moved then 
by the Christian spirit, as well as by consanguinity 
with the enslaved population, they never failed to im- 
press on the conquerors, whether heathen or Christian, 
their duties toward their slaves. They also continued 
to promote manumissions by declaring them meritori- 
ous before God. These manumissions were performed 
at the sacred altar with all the pomp and impressive 
rites of the Church, and were often extorted from the 
Blaveholding barbarian in his last agonies. 

As before, so during the first centuries of the Ger- 
manic settlements of Western and Southern Europe, 



168 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

the Church never recognized the right of one man to en- 
slave another; but rather through the voice of Gregory 
the Great, bishop, pope, or saint, reaffirmed the ancieut 
axiom of the Roman jurist : " Homines quos ah initio 
natura creavit liber os — etjus gentium jugo substituit 
servitutis" The efforts of Gregory the Great, as 
also those of his predecessors and successors, were 
directed toward stopping the infamous slave traffic, 
first in Christian slaves, and then in Jews, Mussulmans, 
and all heathen. The Roman Church and its leaders 
unceasingly condemned the slave-trade, and the 
popes menaced with excommunication the traffickers 
in Mussulman prisoners in Rome, Lyons, Yenice, etc., 
as also those Germans who afterward, in the ninth, 
tenth, and eleventh centuries, enslaved the prisoners 
of war which they made among the Slavonic tribes, 
Christian and heathen. The popes have likewise per- 
petually condemned the African or negro slave-trade, 
from its beginning down to the present day. Gregory 
XYI. interdicts " all ecclesiastics from venturing to 
maintain that this traffic in blacks is permitted under 
any pretext whatsoever ;" and prohibits " teaching in 
public or in private, in any way whatever, any thing 
contrary to this apostolic letter." Explicit words of 
this tenor, coming from the pope, were generally con- 
sidered as expressing the spirit of the Papal Church. 
In the Roman, as in all other churches and sects, how- 
ever, both clergy and laity were wont to interpret all 
such mandates according to their own convenience. 
For reasons formerly alluded to, the various national 



CHRISTIANITY. 169 

ecclesiastical councils held in countries politically re- 
constructed by German invaders — as Spain, France, 
and England — repeatedly and explicitly legislated on 
slavery. These councils had it constantly in view to 
moderate the general treatment of slaves and bond- 
men, and to prevent mutilation and other cruel modes 
of punishment. The churches were proclaimed in- 
violable places of refuge for fugitive slaves, and 
while emancipation was urged as meritqrious, the 
enslavement of freemen was visited with excommu- 
nication. 

Soon, however, the Church, that is, the priesthood 
and hierarchy, came to form an integral part of the 
feudal system. The higher clergy shared the public 
spoils, and had fiefs and other estates stocked with 
serfs and chattels. Then the fervor for emancipation 
abated ; nevertheless, the clergy generally recommend- 
ed a humane treatment of the enslaved. The Irish 
clergy and councils perhaps proved themselves the 
most disinterested at that early mediaeval epoch : they 
were the " underground railroad" of the period — 
assisting in the escape of slaves from bondage ; and a 
council held in Armagh in 1172, gave liberty to all 
English (that is, Saxon) slaves in Ireland. Nowadays, 
on the* contrary, the immense majority of the Irish 
Roman clergy on this continent support and sanction 
chattel slavery. 

In the course of time the clerical hierarchies, mon- 
asteries, etc., inoculated with the feudal and baronial 
spirit, became as zealous for the preservation of even 
8 



170 SLAVEEY IN HISTOEY. 

the most revolting forms of servitude imposed upon 
the bondmen, as the most rapacious lay barons could 
possibly have been. Nowhere did the clergy raise 
its voice for either a total or a partial abolition of 
bondage. 

Serfdom, which had long previously vanished from 
Italy, was, at the appearance of Luther, on the point 
of dissolution in England. The father of the relig- 
ious reformation of Germany rather avoided blending 
social with spiritual reform; but the French and 
Swiss reformers, as well as the anabaptists and other 
sects, kept especially in view the amelioration of the 
condition of the oppressed masses. In general, the 
great movements for a freer spiritual activity which 
characterized the sixteenth century, contributed to 
promote the emancipation of serfs : and this first by 
purifying and elevating the public conscience, and then 
by bringing about the secularization of church prop- 
erty. The state, on becoming # the heir of the clergy, 
was everywhere foremost in abolishing servitude : the 
ecclesiastical corporation, on the other hand, never 
labored for its abolition. 

Among the various religious bodies — the Quakers 
and the modern Unitarians excepted — the absolute- 
ness of Christian doctrine and morals has always 
been greatly modified by worldly interests. Not 
the Episcopal nor Scottish churches, nor indeed any 
other denomination, can claim the merit of having 
begotten the noble sentiment so universal in England 
on the subject of human bondage. The Roman clergy 



CHRISTIANITY. 171 

continues, as it always has done, to oscillate between 
duty and interest ; and the various Protestant sects 
do the same. And it is a significant feature that in 
the American Union almost every religious denomi- 
nation has its pro-slavery and its anti-slavery factions. 



GAULS. 173 

XV. 
GAULS. 

AUTHORITIES : 

Ccesar, Diefferibach, Picot, Amadee Thierry, etc. 

Tee Gauls (Gadhels, Gaels or Gals), a branch of 
the Aryas, were the first historic race which peopled 
Central and Western Europe. It is supposed that the 
Gauls (afterward wrongly called Kelts) . emigrated 
from Asia to Europe before the Greeks, Latins, or 
Slavonians, as undoubtedly they did long previous to 
the Teutons or Germans. Already, in prehistoric 
times, from the regions of the Danube to the Atlantic, 
on the Alps and the Pyrenees as well as on the Brit- 
ish and Irish islands, these first wanderers left their 
marks in the"names of rivers and mountains. Gallia 
(Gaul) finally became their home, and from thence 
they repeatedly issued forth and shook the ancient 
world, ravaged Greece and extended their empire to 
Asia Minor on the east, and Italy on the south. They 
burnt republican Rome in its very infancy, and for 
centuries the Roman republic struggled for life and 
death with them, until they were finally subdued by 
Caesar. 

The whole of Gaul was occupied by tribes more or 
less consanguineous, and their internal social organi- 
zation was in many respects similar. Ceesar, in his 



174 SLAVEEY IN HISTORY. 

bird's-eye view, says that the two dominant classes 
were the druids and nobles, while under them were 
the " plebs, pcene servorem hdbetur loco, quceper nihil 
audet et nullo adhibitur consiglio" This only ex- 
plains the absence or perhaps dormancy of political 
rights. " Plerique (not all, it will be noticed, but 
many, and these mainly such as had suffered reverses 
of fortune) sesse in servitutem dicant nobilibus — in 
hos eadem omnia sunt jura quce dominis in servis." 
This latter phrase only means that certain relations 
between the chief and his dependents were similar to 
those of master and chattel — being the only form of 
servitude known to Csesar, who did not understand 
the tribal organization on which the authority of the 
chief was based. 

Parke Godwin, in his highly elaborate and valua- 
ble History of France, says very justly that "the Gallic 
society was a mere conglomeration of chieftains and 
followers." After giving a picture of Gallic family 
life and exhibiting the nature of the chieftain's power 
and functions, that eminent writer thus continues: 
" The other members of the clan consisted of a num- 
ber of dependents in various degrees of subordina- 
tion, and of adherents whose ties were more or less 
voluntary." Among the dependents were "bond- 
men (attached to the soil), debtor-bondmen, obwrati, 
strangers found in the country without a protector or 
lord, and slaves, captives of war or purchased in the 
open market." Thus far Parke Godwin. 

Slaves, if indeed such existed among the Gauls at 



GAULS. 175 

the time of Caesar, were certainly exceedingly limited 
in number, and chattelhood was not an inherent con- 
dition of any part of the people. In his history of 
his long wars with the Gauls, Caesar makes no allusion 
to a slave-element in the population — an omission 
which shows how insignificant it must have be&n. 

The commercial relations of the Gauls wi'-h the 
Phoenicians and with the Greek colony of MassiUa, or 
Marseilles, probably tended to encourage silvery 
among them. But although our knowledge of their 
internal relations and domestic economy is very, scanty, 
there are a few facts which prove that domestic sla- 
very was hardly even in an embryonic stage at the 
epoch when the Gauls, by their contact with Eome 
and Caesar, entered the general current of history. 
The Massaliotes (or colonists established at Marseilles), 
trafficked in slaves. They also had them in their 
houses, but did not employ them on lands situated 
beyond the precincts of the city. For field laborers 
they hired the Ligurians, who, at given seasons, de- 
scended with their wives from the mountains and 
worked for wages. Lands belonging to Gallic clans 
or districts were no more worked by slave labor than 
were the fields of the Massaliotes. Even in the house- 
holds of the chieftains or nobles, domestic slavery, if 
it existed, must have been hidden from sight. Possi- 
donius, tutor of Pompey, Cicero, and other eminent 
Romans, gives a description of the mode of life and 
domestic customs of the Gauls, in whose country he 
travelled. He observed, that at their luxurious feasts 



176 SLAVEKY IN HISTORY. 

the guests were served by the children of the family, 
instead of domestic slaves ; which fact authorizes the 
conclusion that the number of chattels was very small, 
and that they had no place in family life. 

Gallic slaves consisted of criminals, vagabonds, 
foreigners imported from Massilia, and prisoners 
of war principally made from nations beyond the 
Alps and the Rhine. Even after the invasion of 
the Eimbri and Belgse, Gaul was inhabited by 
tribes more or less akin to each other. It was there- 
fore the theatre of almost uninterrupted domestic war 
between tribes and federations. But when one tribe 
was conquered by another,' the subject people and those 
who escaped the fury of battle were not reduced to 
slavery, but simply became tributary, and received 
their laws from the conqueror. Exceptions to this 
rule must have been exceedingly rare. If an invading 
tribe was subdued, it received lands and was obliged 
to settle among the conquerors. The founders of 
Eome, as we saw (see " Romans : Republicans"), acted 
in a similar manner. Prisoners of war were absorbed 
into the clan, and were held, perhaps exclusively by the 
chieftain, in the condition of serfs bound to the soil, 
but not as chattels or marketable objects; -and they 
were neither deprived of personality nor the rights of 
family. 

The arable lands, forests, and pasturages were 
owned by the clan collectively — the chiefs, of course, 
receiving the lion's share when distributed for cultiva- 
tion ; and each clan lived on its own lands. These 



GAULS. ITT 

agricultural clansmen it was who constituted the ter- 
rible armies which, under various Brenni (chiefs, lead- 
ers, kings), so often terrified and scourged almost 
the whole known world. 

With the increase of the wealth and power of the 
chieftains, their relations with the poorer clansmen 
became more aggressive, and the lands were held by 
the latter under conditions more and more onerous. 
But when Caesar invaded Gaul, no large estates (lati- 
f undid) existed, and the soil was in the hands of a 
numerous peasantry inspired with patriotism and love 
of independence. This peasantry flocked to the stand- 
ard of Yercingetorix, and, to the last, sustained him in 
his deadly struggle against Caesar. 

The living acoustic telegraph used by the Gauls 
during the wars with Caesar is another proof that great 
estates did not exist in Gaul, and that the soil was 
tilled by freemen possessed of homesteads : for each 
peasant, from, the limit of his homestead, shouted the 
news to his next neighbor, he to the next, and so on ; 
and thus intelligence was swiftly carried hundreds of 
miles even during the shortest day of the year. An 
important event occurring in any one tribe was thus 
spread in a twinkling all over Gaul. Now, if the 
country had been divided into large estates worked by 
slaves, such a mode of communication would of course 
have been impossible. 

As the clans and their land were governed by chief- 
tains and nobles, so also were the cities under oli- 
garchic rule. The free population in the cities had 
8* 



178 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

no independent rights, and was obliged to have pa- 
trons. The poor, the defenceless, and even the artisans, 
willingly enrolled themselves for life nnder the client- 
ship of the powerful nobility, depending on them as 
the rural clansmen depended upon the chieftains or 
rural nobles. But the condition of a client in the city 
was not hereditary or transmissible, as was clanship in 
the country. The family of the client held no rela- 
tions of dependency upon the patron ; and a son was 
not bound by obligations contracted by his father. 
When the patron died, the bonds of his clients Were 
severed, and they were free to select another patron. 

Such were the relations between the chieftains and 
clansmen, between the nobility and the people, be- 
tween the soil and its tiller, between client and pa- 
tron, when the Romans commenced the conquest of 
Gaul. Impoverishment, debts contracted to their 
chiefs, and exactions of one kind and another, may 
have transformed many independent clansmen into 
partial bondmen ; but they always preserved their 
family and village rights. 

After the numerous evidences already pointed out 
in the history of the Greeks and Romans, it is un- 
necessary here to show how similar morbid causes 
produced correspondingly destructive effects in the 
crude civilization and social condition of the Gauls. 
The development of these germs brought the Gauls 
almost to serfdom, if not yet to chattelhood, at the 
same time degrading the character of the oligarchs — 
future slaveholders — to the extent described by Caesar. 



GAULS. 179 

This perversion of the internal economy of the Gauls 
prepared them for domestic slavery. Thus often an 
insignificant derangement in the human economy, or 
a trifling lesion in its organism, may find its ultimate 
result only in permanent disorganization or in death,. 

The Roman conquest and the subsequent oppressive 
administration, contributed to establish the same re- 
lations between the population in Gaul as existed in 
Italy and Spain, and which have been already de- 
scribed. The city {municipium) became all and 
every thing ; the clan, the district, the country nothing. 
The former chiefs of the clans became the senators 
of their respective centres. The imperial Roman 
administration favored the concentration of landed 
estates into a few hands, and consequently the impov- 
erishment of small landholders and free laborers and 
operatives of every kind; and thereby greatly in- 
creased the growth of slavery. The collective own- 
ership of the land by the clan and its chiefs became 
wholly transformed into the individual property of 
the chief, who was now also a municipal senator or 
magnate. A striking analogy to this is found in the 
Highlands of Scotland, which, in the same way have 
become the property of a few powerful families. The 
Gallic clansmen before being transformed into chat- 
tels, first became tenants (coloni) — similar to those in 
imperial Italy — of their chiefs (or tierns}, who, on 
becoming senators, lived in the cities, and were sur- 
rounded, not by clients and clansmen, but by slaves. 
The estates now began to be worked by bondmen and 



180 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

chattels, and thus a servile population succeeded to 
the free and sturdy yeomanry of ancient times. 

Not without a struggle, however, was this accom- 
plished. The oppressive taxation, the tyranny of the 
domestic oligarchs, and the devastations committed 
by barbarians — the vanguards of the future destroyers 
of the Roman empire — generated in the third century 
the repeated insurrections of the Bagaudes (the Gallic 
name for insurgent), that is, of the peasantry against 
the cities. All the oppressed small land-owners, ten- 
ants, serfs and slaves united in these insurrections. 

The slave traffic was now very brisk. The Roman 
prefects, tribunes, etc., sold the prisoners of war made 
in the German invasions ; while the Germans, in their 
turn, when successful, carried away or sold their booty 
to the human traffickers from various regions. Thus 
Aurelian, who was a military tribune previous to be- 
coming emperor, sold several hundred Franks, Suevians, 
etc., probably in the city of Maguncia (Mayence). Soon 
the forays became more and more destructive, and for 
several centuries invasion succeeded invasion until the 
impoverishment and ruin of the people were accom- 
plished. The issue of a long train of interacting social 
circumstances was the same in Gaul as in Italy : sen- 
ators and oligarchs owned the lands and the cities, 
and proudly domineered, while the rest of the popula- 
tion sank into tenants, serfs, and bondmen, and most 
of them into chattels. These last had, of course, 
nothing to defend against the invaders, who even at 
times in many ways alleviated their condition : there- 



GAULS. 181 

fore the invaders were often received with open arms 
by the enslaved populations. When the destroyers 
of the Roman rule over Gaul finally settled therein, 
many of the nobles and rich magnates understood how 
to ingratiate themselves with their new masters, and 
thus shared in their spoils of lands and slaves. By 
far the greater number, however, were themselves 
ruined and enslaved. 

In Gaul, as over the whole ancient and Roman 
world, not the slaveholders but their slaves survived 
the general destruction, nay, finally stepped into the 
places once occupied by their enslavers and masters. 



GEKMANS. 183 

XVI. 
GERMANS. 

AUTHORITIES : 

Taciius, Codex Legum Antiquorum Barbarorum, Jacob Grimm, Mentzel, 
Wirth, Puetter, Zimmerman, etc. 

The Germans, in all probability, were the last of the 
Aryan stock who immigrated into Europe. History 
first discovers them finally settled in central Europe ; 
and for how long a time they had previously roamed 
in the primitive forests of these regions it is impossible 
to conjecture. With the exception of the left bank 
of the Rhine, Switzerland, and the northern slopes of 
the Tyrolean Alps — which regions, in the course of 
centuries were conquered from various Keltic tribes 
— the Germany proper of to-day is about the same 
as when Caesar met the barbarians on the Rhine. 
Then the Germans were rude savages, with but little 
agriculture ; living on milk, cheese, and flesh ; and 
their condition was in many respects similar, perhaps 
even inferior, to that of the Tartars, Kalmucks, and 
Bashkirs, who still rove over northern and central 
Asia. 

Neither clanship nor patriarchate existed among the 
Germans, but the rule of individual will strengthened 
by the family ties. Divided into numerous tribes, the 
Germans seem to have spent many centuries in hunt- 
ing the wild beasts of their primitive forests, and in 



184 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

making war upon each other. Most probably these 
almost uninterrupted domestic wars created and de- 
veloped aristocracy and slavery, both of which were 
firmly established among the Germans when they first 
appear on the record of history. Among the European 
descendants of the Aryas, the primitive Germans re- 
flect most strikingly the Euphratic story of Mmrod, 
" the strong," " the hunter," subduing the feeble and 
preying on his person and labor. A bitter hatred be- 
tween the tribes prevailed from time immemorial; 
and consequently feuds and wars were perpetual. The 
conquered was compelled to labor for the conqueror; 
and thus originated, very probably, bondage and do- 
mestic slavery, as well as the aristocratic contempt 
which the fighting part of the population had for the 
subdued and enslaved laborers of a tribe. When one 
German tribe subdued another, the victors either 
seized on the lands of the conquered and settled 
thereon, transforming the former occupants into bond- 
men ; or, if they did not settle among the subdued, 
they made_ them tributaries, carrying away a certain 
portion of the population as slaves. Thus the Ger- 
mans, in their wild forests, were mainly divided into 
two great social elements — the freemen, or nobles, 
possessed of all rights, and the bondmen possessed of 
none. But all, free and slave, were of kindred race 
and lineage. 

All the German dialects have a specific denomina- 
tion for the chattel. Schalch, scaloh, schalk, is the 
word for slave, and seneschalh for the overseer. Af- 



GERMANS. 185 

terward, in mediaeval times, seneschalk was an office, 
dignity, or title. 

Besides wars and conquests, there were other sources 
which fed and sustained slavery : thus certain crimes 
were punished with slavery, and even freemen gambled 
away their liberty — a custom found among no other 
race or nation ; a freeman, likewise, could at any time 
sell himself into slavery. Any one condemned to 
compound in money for murder or any other offence, 
if he had no money, gave himself as a slave into the 
hands of the family or individual whom he had of- 
fended, or to the man who loaned him money to pay 
the composition. The schaiks were more absolutely 
in the power of their master than were the Roman 
slaves under the empire, or even, if possible, than the 
chattels of the American slave states. Although 
Tacitus says that masters killed their slaves only when 
intoxicated or otherwise maddened with - passion, the 
barbarian codes and other historic evidence show that 
the schaiks were treated with the utmost cruelty, and 
even subject to be maimed in various ways. Some 
historians who hold up the Germans as models of 
social and civic virtue, attribute this cruelty to their 
contact with the Romans, whose example they fol- 
lowed. But the influence of Roman polity on Ger- 
many began only toward the end of the fourth cen- 
tury ; and many of the northern tribes, as the Saxons, 
Frisians, etc., did not come under the influence of 
Roman, Christian, or any foreign civilization till about 
the eighth century. Some of these barbarian codes 



186 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

were written when the barbarians had settled on the 
Roman ruins ; then, undoubtedly, they incorporated 
some Roman ideas, and contained laws bearing on 
existing relations ; but still they were principally the 
embodiment of their own immemorial usages. The 
Visigothic code, for instance, was written very soon 
•after they settled in Gaul and Spain, long before the 
destruction of the Western empire, and consequently 
could not have been seriously influenced by the legal 
conceptions or customs of Rome. 

Tacitus says that little difference existed between 
the mode of life of masters and slaves : Inter eadem 
pecora in eadem humo degunt. At the time of Dio- 
dorus Siculus, youthful male and female schalks served 
at the tables of masters, who were always willing to 
sell them for a jug of wine. 

In this primitive epoch of German historical exist- 
ence, the pride of blood and descent seems to have 
been deeply ingrained in the German mind; and there 
was a strong aversion against corrupting the lineage 
by intermarriage with a schalk man or woman, even 
although they were of the same race and family. 
Among the Saxons immemorial custom even punished 
a mesalliance with death. Thus the very ancestors of 
many American slaveholders, now so proud of their 
Saxon blood, were considered unworthy of marriage 
with their masters. But concubinage with slave 
women was then common (as it now is in the South), 
whatever Tacitus may say concerning German conju- 
gal fidelity. The bastards of parents one free the 



GEKMANS. 187 

other slave, became serfs to the soil. If a freeman 
married a slave woman, their children were schalks, 
and sometimes the father even was reduced to slavery. 
A free woman marrying a slave, might be killed by 
her parents or became a slave of the king — when the 
Germans had kings in their new, post-Roman mon- 
archies." Most of these cruel legal customs, and many 
others found in the codes, belong to the heathen epoch, 
to the period of pure Germanic existence unadultera- 
ted by contact with the corruptions of civilized life. 
They prove how deep was the Germanic contempt for 
the ignoble or unfortunate among their own brethren ; 
they show also the very ancient appearance of slavery 
amoug them, and its violent and criminal origin, like 
that of slavery always and everywhere. 

Ancient usages and laws regulating inheritance 
perpetuate themselves remarkably among peoples and 
nations. From their forests the Germans transplanted 
the right of primogeniture over Europe. The land 
was given to the males, while the daughters received 
the movables, maneipia, and the schalks — a conclu- 
sive evidence that not alone bondage to the soil, but 
positive chattelhood, prevailed in the primitive forests 
of Germany. 

Cities and organized industry had then no exis- 
tence. Freemen, i. e., masters, had but a few crude 
wants, and these were supplied by the work of the 
schalks in the dwelling or in the hof (court) of the 
master. In primitive prehistoric times, as in the 
time of Tacitus and afterward, all the male and 



188 SLAVEEY IN HISTOEY. 

female household menials, peasants and workmen, were 
schalks. 

Manumissions were common, but depended wholly 
on the will of the master. They could be obtained 
in various ways — might be bought with labor, prod- 
uce, money, etc. The manumitted did not, however, 
enter at once into full enjoyment of the rights of 
freeman or master ; indeed, only his descendants of 
the third generation became fully purified and capa- 
ble of entering into the noble class. They then con- 
stituted, probably, the inferior nobility or freemen, 
who were followers and companions of the first class ; 
and perhaps from them sprang the free yeomanry, 
who originally possessed but small property and a 
small number of schalks and serfs. 

The fighting-men, or warriors, who subdued and 
enslaved other tribes, or transformed into schalks the 
weaker members of their own tribe, frequently located 
some of them on lands or homesteads which they per- 
mitted them to cultivate for their own use, on con- 
dition of paying a rent, generally in kind, and per- 
forming various other acts of servitude. Such was 
the origin of the German Uti, who afterward consti- 
tuted the common people. 

The free, that is originally the strong, the subduer, 
was at the summit of the whole German social struc- 
ture. He was free because he was absolute master 
over the weak, who had no power or strength in him- 
self or family, and therefore was rightless. The 
genuine meaning of the word /row (from which is 



GERMANS. 189 

derived fri, free, freedom,) is " the right to own" 
land, liti and schalks. From frow comes the frowen 
" freemen," " rulers," " masters," — the caste for which 
all others existed. Land and schalks constituted the 
wealth of & frowen or nobleman, and to acquire them 
the German tribes exerted all their warlike energies. 
All the remote Teutonic invasions, as well as those of 
the mediaeval times, were made principally for the 
acquisition of land and slaves. The lands conquered 
by the swords of the frowen, were worked by the 
schalks. 

The slave traffic existed and was highly developed 
among the primitive Germans. It was carried on at 
the time of Tacitus, and some investigators maintain 
that for long centuries it was the only traffic known 
among the barbarous Germans ; and slavery in its worst 
form was in full blast in Germany when her tribes 
dashed themselves against the Western empire. The 
slaves constituted more than half of the whole Ger- 
manic population. Wirth, the most conscientious 
investigator of the primitive social condition of the 
Germanic race, estimates the proportion of freemen 
to slaves as one to twenty-four. All of them— -frowen, 
adelings, nobles of all degrees, followers, vassals, liti 
and schalks, lived the same simple, agrestic life. Rude 
in mind and of vigorous bodies, in comparatively 
small numbers they shattered in pieces the rotting 
Roman empire. 

First the incursions, then the definite invasions and 
conquests — Attila's forays from one end of Europe to 



190 SLAVERY IN HISTORY.- 

the other — gave a vigorous impulse to slavery, both 
abroad and at home. Abroad, the invaders enslaved 
all that they reached — destroying, burning, devastat- 
ing, impoverishing the population, and increasing the 
number of those forced to seek in chattelhood a rem- 
edy against starvation. At home, immense tracts of 
land were depopulated and abandoned, and old and 
new frowen, .masters, seized upon them. Of course 
schalks were in demand, and were supplied by traffic 
and kidnapping. 

The wars among the Germanic tribes, which were 
continued more or less vigorously, and the wars with 
neighboring populations, increased the number of 
slaves thrown upon the market. 

The transition of a great part of Europe from the 
Roman to what may be called the German world, was 
so terrible that for several centuries the most unpar- 
alleled destruction, desolation, and slavery constituted, 
the principal characteristics of the first mediaeval 
epoch. 

But Europe, the Christian world, and humanity were 
not to be submerged in the foul mire of chattelism. 
The awful crisis lasted through many generations, and 
bloodshed and superhuman suffering were their lot. 
But finally, the turning-point of the disease was 
reached : the disorder began to yield. Often after 
such a crisis the malignant symptoms do not abate at 
once, nay, they sometimes reappear with renewed 
force, and a long period is needed for a complete re- 
covery. So in the evolution of Europe, overflowed by 



GERMANS. 191 

the German tribes, the most malignant symptoms of 
chattelhood continued and reappeared for a long time 
in their worst characteristics, before the social body 
entered the stage of convalescence. 

The bloody throes of the German world redounded 
to the benefit of the nobles abroad and at home. Liti 
and schalks increased, and land rapidly accumulated 
in the hands of the few during the first centuries of 
the German Christian era. Thus Saxony belonged to 
twenty, some say to twelve nobles, who kept thereon 
half-free vassals, liti, and schalks. 

As the oligarchs of Greece and Rome and Gaul, 
so the German frowen, the powerful, the rich, in all 
possible ways, jper fas et nefas, seized upon the home- 
steads of the poor ; and the impoverished freemen or 
ahrimen, smaller nobles, and vassals, became liti and 
schalks. Analogous conditions produce analogous 
results in usages as in institutions and laws ; and 
often that which appears to have been borrowed by 
one nation or people from another, is only a domestic 
outgrowth germinating from similar circumstances. 

When the German lay and clerical founders of 
the feudal system possessed more land than they 
could cultivate, and when the iron hand of Charle- 
magne prevented domestic feuds and the supply of 
slaves from that source, then they kidnapped right and 
left, heathen and Christian, poor freeman or schalk. 
Some of the feudal barons of the time of Charlemagne 
owned as many as twenty thousand liti and schalks. 

Karl, Karle (the correct name), or Charlemagne 



192 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

(the more common one), in one of his numerous edicts 
or capitularies, prescribes as follows to those who re- 
ceived lands, baronies, abbeys, etc., as fiefs or grants: 
"Et qui nostrum habet beneficium diligentissime 
prevideat quantum potest Deo donante, ut nullus ex 
mancipiis (chattels) ad ilium pertinentes beneficium 
fame moriatur, quod superest ultra illius fainilise ne- 
cessitatem, hoc libere rendat jure prescripto." 

Manumissions were promoted, in various ways, by 
the civil and clerical authorities. Many free yeomen 
were created from manumitted slaves, as well as from 
poor vassals or followers. But such were soon impov- 
erished by wars and devastations, and were, from 
various causes, reduced to the condition of liti and 
chattels. 

Serfdom and slavery were generally more severe in 
the northern portion of Germany, as Saxony, etc., 
than in the southern ; but in both, the peasantry were 
crushed, oppressed, and, when it was feasible, enslaved. 
When Lothair I., grandson of Charlemagne, revolted 
against his father, Louis the Pious, he appealed for 
help to the oppressed peasantry, tenants, and chattels. 

The centuries of the faustrecht — " right of the 
fist," that is of the sword, of brute force — soon suc- 
ceeding all over Germany to Charlemagne's orderly 
rule, the strongholds of dynasts, barons, nobles and 
robbers, shot out everywhere like mushrooms; and 
from them radiated oppressions and exactions of every 
kind. The ancient practice of ruining the poor free- 
men and tenants, then transforming them into serfs, 



GERMANS. 193 

and then the serfs into chattels, went on as of old. 
In proportion as the forests were cleared, however, 
the baron found he could not profitably work the 
extensive estates with schalks alone, and that it would 
be more economical to transform these chattels into 
serfs, tenants, etc., and establish them on small parcels 
of his property. This was the first feeble sign of 
amelioration. Villages formed in this way by dynasts, 
or princes, and by barons, then received some rudi- 
ments of communal, rural organization. 

A more powerful engine of emancipation, however, 
were the cities. In the course of the tenth century, 
dynasts, princes and . emperors began everywhere to 
found cities, endowing them with various franchises 
and privileges. The legitimate flow of events, the 
necessities created by a settled organic existence 
which could only be supplied by the regular move- 
ments of industry and commerce, together with the 
influence of Gaul, and above all, of Italy, stimulated 
the German rulers. To the emperor Henry I., of the 
house of Saxony, belongs the glory of having given 
the first impulse to commerce, and thus the first blow 
to chattelhood and serfdom. 

The population * of the newly-founded cities con- 
sisted of inferior people of all kinds — laborers, oper- 
atives, small traders, poor freemen, and persons manu- 
mitted on condition of residing in the cities — the 
founders of the cities originally peopling them with 
their own retainers and with vagabonds of all kinds. 
Of course no nobles even of the lowest kind became 
9 



194 SLAVEEY IN HISTORY. 

burghers, and thus the first municipal patricians were 
of very inferior birth. Thus antagonism to barons 
and feudal nobles generally formed the very corner- 
stone of the cities. 

Among the privileges granted to the first cities was 
that a serf, schalk, or, in a word, any bondman, seek- 
ing refuge in the precincts of a city, became free if 
not claimed within a year. This respite to the fugi- 
tive soon became a common law all over Germany, 
even between nobles in relation to their fugitive serfs ; 
and the hunter of a fugitive lost caste even among 
the free masters— -freiherm. When a legal prosecu- 
tion was attempted, every difficulty, legal and illegal, 
was thrown in the way of the claimant — the cities 
willingly resorting to arms for the defence of their 
right of refuge. 

The first Crusades emancipated large numbers of per- 
sons, as the taking of the cross was the sign of liberty 
for serf and for slave. But in Germany as in France, 
the great and permanent influence of the Crusades on 
emancipation consisted in their strengthening the cities 
and impoverishing the nobles, and thus producing a sal- 
utary change in internal economic relations. 

The wars of the Germans with their neighbors, and 
above all with the Slavonians, Maghyars, etc., in the 
tenth and eleventh centuries, again gave vitality to 
the slave traffic ; and war prisoners and captives, not 
now of their own kindred, but of foreign birth, were 
brought to the markets for sale. 

Nevertheless, chattelhood was slowly dying out, 



GERMANS. 195 

and about the twelfth century but few traces of it 
remained : prisoners of war began to be ransomed or 
exchanged, and villeinage, with various services at- 
tached, altogether superseded domestic slavery. 

The villein possessed the rights of family, of village, 
and partially of communal organization. But many of 
the galling characteristics of chattelhood were trans- 
fused into serfdom and villeinage. The nobles became, 
if possible, more insolent, exacting and oppressive. 
But the villeins and peasants began to feel their 
pow T er, and to combine and act in common in the 
villages, and afterward in the communes. 

Partial insurrections followed each other in various 
parts of Germany ; here against one baron or master, 
there against another. Every insurrection, even if 
suppressed, nevertheless gave an impulse, though 
sometimes imperceptible, to amelioration and eman- 
cipation. Insurrections of the down-trodden and 
oppressed classes are like feverish efforts of diseased 
physiology to resist the disorder, to throw out the 
virus, and restore the normal condition in the economy 
of life. The whole world admires the glorious insur- 
rection of the Swiss-German peasantry against their 
insolent masters. Then the bondmen, villeins, etc., 
individually or in small bodies, by the axe, by fire, 
and in every possible manner, protested their impre- 
scriptible right to liberty. So also did the celebrated 
Miinzer when the reformation dawned over Germany 
and Europe. He firmly believed that religious reform, 
to be beneficial to the poor, must go hand in hand 



196 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

with social ameliorations. The most notable insurrec- 
tion, however, was the great uprising of the German 
peasantry in the sixteenth century. From the Yos- 
gese mountains, from the Alps to the Baltic, numer- 
ous isolated forces rose in arms, each inspired by the 
same great idea. They had no centres, no possibility 
of a combination of effort, but all of them recognized 
the same covenant : 1. The gospel to be preached in 
truth, but not in the interest of their masters — nobles 
and clergy. 2. Not to pay any kind of tithes. 3. 
The interest or rent from landed property to be re- 
duced to five per cent. 4. Forests to be communal 
property. 5. All waters free. 6. Game free. 7. Serf- 
dom to be abolished. 8. Election of communal au- 
thorities by the respective communes. 9. Lands 
robbed from the peasantry to be restored to the ori- 
ginal owners. 

This great war of the peasants was terrible, pitiless, 
bloody. More than one thousand strongholds, burghs, 
and monasteries were destroyed ; but the peasants 
were finally overpowered, the nobility being aided by 
the forces of the empire. Luther, too, thundered 
against the poor peasants.* But not in vain did they 
shed their blood. The oppression by the old frowen, 
strengthened by feudality, was finally broken at the 
roots. The imperial German diet declared to the 
nobles, that if they did not cease their cruelties, at 
the next revolt they should be abandoned to their 
fate. 

* See "America and Europe," by the present writer. 



GERMANS. 197 

Serfdom was not yet abolished, but was moderated 
in various ways. The direct and indirect influence of 
the Reformation on the condition of the peasantry has 
been already mentioned. Mild reforms were intro- 
duced in the dominions of various German sovereigns. 
Certain liberties were granted to rural communes, and 
the number of free tenants slowly but uninterruptedly 
increased. The conditions of villeinage on private 
estates began to be regulated by the respective govern- 
ments ; and absolute serfdom was slowly dying out. The 
prosperity of Germany increased proportionally with 
the emancipation, though but partial, of rural labor, and 
the freedom of the soil. On an average, those regions 
were most prosperous which contained the greatest 
number of emancipated rural communities, or where 
the villeinage was reduced, systematized, and made 
more and more free from the arbitrary exactions of 
the master. 

The peculiar political organization of Germany pre- 
vented any unity of action in the extinction of rural 
servitude. Many of its features — some relating to 
the person, but principally to the soil — survived even 
to the present century in certain parts of the smaller 
German states ; and in Austria, Bohemia and Hun- 
gary, there is still room for infinite improvement in 
the condition of the peasantry. But the mortal dis- 
order exists ?io more : the fundamental rights of man 
are recognized. Governmental maladministration, 
injustice, oppressive taxation, exactions by officials 
and landlords, are unhappily common ; but all these 



198 SLAVERY m HISTORY. 

are in flagrant violation of established laws. And, 
bad though they are, they cannot for a moment com- 
pare with the blighting influences of chattel slavery. 

For long centuries, and with persistent pertinacity, 
have slavery and the oppression of man and his labor 
gnawed at the German vitals; and centuries must' 
elapse before the recovery of a normal condition. 
But the Germ ans of the present day — moralists, states- 
men, savants and professional men, as well as artisans, 
mechanics and agriculturists — are unanimous in con- 
demning human bondage, whatever may be the race 
enslaved. Few, indeed, are there of the great Ger- 
man race whose minds are inaccessible to the nobler 
promptings of freedom and humanity. 



LONGOBAKDS: ITALIANS. 199 

XVII. 
LONGOBARDS— ITALIANS. 

AUTHORITIES : 

Leges Longobardorum, Cantu, Troya, Karl Hegel, etc. 

The Western Roman empire was fatally permeated 
throughout with chattel slavery. Domestic usage had 
made its German invaders also familiar with the art 
and practice of enslaving : their conquest of Rome 
accordingly but added strength and extension to the 
slave-edifice. For a longer or shorter period, various 
German tribes ravaged Italy. The domination of the 
Ostrogoths lasted for about sixty years, and the rule 
of Theodoric the Great is recorded as among the best 
and wisest in that period of devastation and oppres- 
sion. Finally, the Longobards founded in Italy a per- 
manent establishment. At the first onset, the Longo- 
bards reduced all, in city and country, to bondage : 
the magnate, the rich, the slaveholder, as well as the 
workman, the poor, the serf and the chattel, consti- 
tuted their booty, and as suck were divided among 
the victors. 

Some historians maintain that all free Romans,* 
rich and poor — a few favored aristocratic families 
excepted — were deprived of the rights of personal 

* Romans as citizens of the empire and not of the city of Rome. 



200 SLAVEEY IN HISTORY. 

liberty and property by the Longobards ; others, how- 
ever, assert that the free population was only made 
tributary, but otherwise preserved their property, 
rights and laws. The conquerors (as hospites, or quar- 
tered soldiers) generally took about a half of the 
houses, lands and chattels of the conquered, and fur- 
thermore compelled the primitive owner to pay them 
a tribute from what was left. In Italy, the Longo- 
bards made the free Romans, rich and poor, tributary 
to the extent of one-third of all which was left them 
from actual confiscation; and Paul Diaconus — him- 
self a Longobard — says : " IZomani tributarii effici- 
untur" The artisans and traders, and indeed all 
inhabitants of cities, likewise paid tribute. They 
could not move from one place to another without 
the written permission of their Longobard master ; 
and in this way originated the system of passports 
for bondmen, which is still maintained in our Slave 
States. Thus the Romans, once proud and free, be- 
came but half free — a something between the positive 
freeman, such as the Longobard alone was, and the 
still more reduced tributaries, the aldii or aldions, 
and the serfs. In brief, the freemen, rich or poor, 
were made inferior in rights, and in personal liberty 
to the soldiers ; the n oft-free, the ancient colons, etc., 
were pressed a degree lower in servitude; and the 
condition of the domestic chattels alone remained 
unchanged. 

The Longobards, like all the other German warriors, 
disliked the cities, and the chiefs and nobles erected 



LONGOBARDS: ITALIANS. 201 

their fastnesses outside of them. The common soldiers 
receiving lands in different quantities, formed the free- 
holders, yeomen, or ahrimans^ and were bound to per- 
form military duty. Such was the origin of the feudal 
system, which sprang up on the ruins of the Roman 
empire. The numerous cities of Italy had no longer 
any political rights or signification, though they still 
preserved some remains of former culture and civil- 
ization, and even faint shadows of the former muni- 
cipal regime. The imperial city itself was not overrun 
by the Longobards, and from thence, as also from the 
other cities of that part of Italy which belonged to the 
Eastern emperors, some faint glimmerings reached 
the Longobard region and tended to preserve ancient 
municipal traditions. 

The influence of the Italian polity and culture at 
length began to humanize the Longobards. Some of 
their laws concerning chattels and slaves are more 
humane than were those under the emperors — more 
humane, than those now existing in our Slave States. 
For example, a master committing adultery with the 
wife of his chattel lost the ownership of both her and 
her husband, and had no farther power over them. 
Various regulations also protected the serf and chat- 
tel against a cruel master, and punishment was not 
arbitrary, but was in many cases regulated by law. 
Emancipations were encouraged and protected : King 
Astolf's edict even proclaimed that it was meritorious 
to change a chattel into a freeman. However, during 
the first period of their dominion, the Longobards, 
9* 



202 SLAVERY IN HISTOEY. 

like all the other German conquerors, in Spain, Gaul, 
etc., and, above all, the feudal dukes and nobles, con- 
sidered the blood of the conquered as impure, and 
therefore far inferior to their own. 

Industry and commerce gradually began to acquire 
vitality, and the chattels began slowly to disappear 
from the cities, either by emancipation, by purchasing 
their liberty, or by being established as aldii or serfs 
on their masters' lands. 

The slave-trade was now confined principally to 
non-baptized prisoners — whom the Christians of that 
epoch regarded as the progeny of the evil one. Ma- 
homedans, heathen, Germans, as the Anglo-Saxons 
and others, from various nations and tribes, were more 
numerous in the slave marts than were those born on 
the soil of Italy. 

Under the Longobards, Italy again began to be more 
commonly cultivated by numerous colons with very 
limited rights, but still in better condition than those 
of the preceding epoch ; copyholders and freeholders 
also began to increase, as has been already mentioned. 
So that when the heavy clouds of the mediaeval times 
began to break, the condition of Italy was slightly im- 
proving ; and when Karl, or Charlemagne, put an end 
to" the dominion of the Longobards, more land was 
under culture, and the free though tributary popula- 
tion was greater, both in the cities and the country, 
than on their first invasion. 

The rule of the Franks, which succeeded that of 
the Longobards, did not impair the condition of the 



LONGOBAKDS : ITALIANS. 203 

Italians. Peace was beneficial to labor, labor stim- 
ulated emancipation. Thus the number of chattels 
was more and more reduced, while the serfs, adscripti 
glebce, increased. But the disorders which succeeded 
the. dismembering of the empire of Charlemagne again 
ruined many free yeomen, ahrimans, and others own- 
ing small homesteads, and obliged them to submit to 
the oppression of the mighty nobles. Many of the 
dispossessed and impoverished, however, sought refuge 
in the cities, where industry flourished in proportion 
with the freedom of the workmen and operatives. 
Finally, about the eleventh century, the cities began 
to strike for their independence. This was the time 
of the revival of the communal franchises in other parts 
of Europe also ; but the first spark was struck in Italy. 
Around the standard raised by the cities crowded the 
serfs, rural and domestic chattels, and all other kinds 
of bondmen and oppressed. This was, in fact, the in- 
surrection of these against the landed barons, nobles, 
and oligarchs. All runaways found refuge and pro- 
tection in the cities ; and hence arose the energy, the 
strength, and the democratic rancor of the cities 
against the nobility and their strongholds. 

In the second part of the mediaeval epoch, 
throughout Italy and Western Europe, prisoners of 
war were no more sold as slaves, but were ransomed 
or exchanged. The Moors and Arabs (Mahomedans) 
were the sole marketable chattels. 

All the Italian cities extended their dominion, ac- 
quired lands, incorporated baronies, and regulated the 



204 SLAVEEY IN HISTORY. 

relations between the owners of the soil and the 
tenants. Domestic slavery was altogether extinct; 
the cities were animated by free labor in their arts, 
industries and handicrafts, and on the estates, the 
peasants, serfs and bondmen, adscripti gleftce, became 
vassals obliged to follow the barons or the cities into 
war ; they became free tenants — first paying rent for 
their land in kind, and then paying in money ; and 
the number of freeholders, and others holding home- 
steads, continually increased. Hunting for abscond- 
ed serfs now had an end. The cities and boroughs 
emancipated all the villagers and serfs around them. 
In the course of the twelfth century, personally de- 
grading servitude of every kind almost wholly dis- 
appeared; and the relations between the proprie- 
tor of land and the farmer were established on the 
basis which, with more or less modification, prevails 
to the present day. 

In the ancient classical world, in Greece and Rome, 
domestic slavery had its seat in the cities, and there- 
from expanded over the land, destroying the whole 
social structure. But now, the first shout for liberty 
came from the Italian cities ; the cities first emanci- 
pated the laborers within their own walls, and then 
emancipated the rural serf. Cities again became the 
centres of civilization ; they nursed its infancy, tended 
its first footsteps and gave it the free air of heaven : 
they trained it not amid clanking chains and groaning 
chattels. 

Thus does history annihilate the ignorant fallacy 



LONGOBA'RDS : ITALIANS. 205 

about Saxons and Germans being the godfathers of 
social or political freedom. 

Many evils and disorders undoubtedly remained 
and even yet remain ; but the sum of all evils — prop- 
erty in man and in his toil — was utterly destroyed. 
Then came the brilliant epoch of the Italian Lombard 
cities — the culminating glory of Italian civilization 
— whose coruscating warmth set free the whole of 
"Western Europe. 



■franks: FRENCH. 207 

XYIII. 
FRANKS— FRENCH. 

AUTHORITIES : 

Augustin Thierry, Henry Martin, Bonnemere, etc. 

Domestic slavery, aggravated by trie oppression of 
the poor, the" devastations of war, the insatiable ne- 
cessities of the imperial treasury, the confiscations of 
property during the reigns of bad emperors, and other 
causes, ate into the very vitals of Roman Gaul. It 
has been already shown how the ancient relations of 
clansman and client merged successively into tribu- 
tary colons, into adscripti glebce, and into chattels. 
At the period of the final assault of the northern 
races on the Roman empire, in Gaul, as everywhere 
else, there was no people behind the imperial legions 
except rich slaveholders and poor degraded freemen, 
serfs and chattels ; and the legions, too, were mostly 
recruited from among vagabonds and barbarians. 
Long before this time, Stilicon, in order to raise sol- 
diers for his army, proclaimed freedom to the chattels 
who should join his standard ; and by this means col- 
lected over thirty thousand men ! 

During the integrity of the empire, branches of 
the tribe of Franks dwelt in parts of northern Gaul, 
either as colonists, or as allies who recognized in the 
Roman emperor their lord paramount. From here 



208 SLAVEEY IN HISTORY. 

they dealt their conquering blows ; they subdued to 
their rule the other German races already established 
in Gaul, and laid the foundation of the future Carlo- 
vingian empire, and finally of France. 

The Franks permitted the conquered peoples to re- 
tain their own law, which was the Roman, for all civil 
suits between Roman and Roman. This benefited 
only the freemen — of whom there were but few — 
and the rich, so that they could oppress the poor and 
treat them as they did under the empire ; for the 
Franks did not interfere in any of their internal rela- 
tions, legal or illegal. The rich and cunning Roman 
magnates ingratiated themselves with their conquerors : 
they became anftrustiones or commensals of the kings, 
thus acquiring a high social and political status and 
influence ; and there were many of them among the 
- powerful and influential aristocracy which sprang up 
under the Merovingians. All the conquered paid 
oppressive tribute ; and the rich, as of old, used every 
means to increase their estates, serfs and chattels from 
the booty and exactions made by the Franks. 

But although the rights of the free Romans were 
thus recognized in principle, their persons and prop- 
erty were by no means regarded as sacred. The 
Franks divided the conquered lands among them in 
lots, and often seized, along with the estate, the whole 
of the personal property of a rich Roman magnate. 

The Merovingians were almost continually at war 
among themselves, and these wars were most ruinous 
to the cities and the rich free Romans. When a peace 



FRANKS : FKENCH. 209 

was concluded, these Romans constituted the hostages 
for both belligerent parties ; and when a peace was 
broken, the hostages on both sides were treated as 
prisoners of war ; they became chattels, and their 
property was confiscated. 

The Roman cities became the property of the kings 
and chiefs, the lands the property of the Frankish 
soldiery. The Franks also were perpetually at war 
either among themselves or with their neighbors. 
Military duty was a condition of the possession of 
land, so that Roman and other slaves and bondmen 
cultivated the soil and worked for their conquerors. 
During the imperial epoch, the opulent Gallic mag- 
nates and senators lived in magnificent villas, like the 
Roman nabobs and oligarchs in Italy, Spain, Africa, 
etc. During the early period of the invasions, an 
owner would often fortify his villa and defend it with 
his armed household and chattels. Such villas, chang- 
ing masters, afterward, in many instances, became 
feudal strongholds, around each of which grew a vil- 
lage, which in the course of time became a borough, 
then a town, and finally a city. In this way the Gallo- 
Roman villas gave rise to the French name village 
and ville. 

In general, with the new Frankish conquest, oppres- 
sion became increasedly grievous, while the slave 
traffic, especially in prisoners of war, received a new 
impulse. In the first storm the Roman fiscality for a 
moment disappeared ; but it was soon restored, and 
with it almost the whole of the Roman administra- 



210 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

tion. The Franks revolted against taxation when one 
of the kings tried to apply it to them, but the Roman 
populations bore its whole brunt. ' Tribute, taxes and 
other exactions finally became so oppressive that the 
poor and impoverished sold their children and some- 
times even themselves into slavery. The Jews were 
the common mediators and factors in this traffic, as 
well as the most extensive slave-traders all over Eu- 
rope, both then and in subsequent times ; and a con- 
siderable part of the hereditary hatred of the Euro- 
pean masses toward the Jews is to be ascribed to this 
historic fact. 

The Frankish kings and their Frankish subjects had 
large estates, metairies, worked by serfs and chattels. 
The conquerors hated the cities, preferring the favor- 
ite old German life in the country, where they spent 
their time surrounded by their followers. The lordly 
mansions, the sola of the kings and the powerful, 
were erected amidst great forests in the style of en- 
campments ; and to this day the German word hof- 
lager, " court-camp," is the name for the residence 
or court of a sovereign. Political power and pres- 
tige were no longer derived from municipal citizen- 
ship, but from the possession of land ; and thus origi- 
nated the feudal importance of the country and the 
barons, in contradistinction to the now powerless mu- . 
nicipium. In the Greek and Roman world, the coun- 
try was wholly sacrificed, politically and socially, to 
the city, which, in turn, acquired more and more 
political power and importance in proportion as do- 



FRANKS: FRENCH. 211 

mestic slavery destroyed the primitive yeomanry. In 
the early stages of feudalism scarcely any attention 
was paid to the cities ; they are principally mentioned 
as sources whence taxes and tributes may be largely 
squeezed. 

In the Free States of the American Union, also, in 
the townships and villages, the significance of the 
country has reached its highest and noblest develop- 
ment. Here the free townships and villages are the 
fountains of healthy political life, and the genuine 
source of all civilizing agencies. 

Under the Merovingians and Carlovingians, the 
frequent wars and oppressions proved destructive not 
only to the natives but also to the conquerors them* 
selves. The Franks and other German landholders, 
by their violent and disorderly mode of life, were 
soon impoverished and became the prey of powerful 
neighbors of their own kindred. The savage rigor 

O CD O 

of the law regulating composition for crimes quickly 
drained and utterly destroyed the patrimonies of the 
reckless soldiery, and thus rapidly increased the num- 
ber of landless vagabonds, who were neither tenants 
nor serfs, but became chattels to men of their own 
race, once their companions and perhaps even their 
followers. At the end of the second Salic dynasty 
very few free laborers existed, and kidnapping, es- 
pecially on the sea-coasts, became common. 

Charlemagne, as previously mentioned, tried to 
regulate and alleviate the condition of the bondmen 
and chattels. His capitularies forbade the selling 



212 SLAVEKY IN HISTORY. 

of chattels beyond the kingdom ; and whoever vio- 
y lated this law became a slave himself. Slaves were 
to be sold in the presence of the count or the bishop, 
or their lieutenants, or notables, but not surreptitious- 
ly, or from one person to another, without being con • 
trolled by the authorities ; and heavy fines also fol- 
lowed all violations of this law. Notwithstanding all 
this, however, Norman and Saracen wars and inva- 
sions, together with Frankish taxations and exactions, 
kept the country in the same state of desolation as 
during the centuries of the agonizing empire. Scarce- 
ly any towns existed, and the few large cities were 
scattered at enormous distances one from the other. 
Fastnesses, castles, burghs and fortified monasteries 
dotted the land ; even they, however, being separated 
from each other by great forests and marshes. The 
poor and oppressed serfs and chattels were hunted and 
kidnapped, and no place of refuge existed for them. 

Under Charlemagne, public order and protection 
to the free tenants, serfs and chattels, existed to as 
high a degree as was possible at that epoch ; but with 
his death all this disappeared. The crisis which then 
-occurred and which ended in consolidating the feudal 
social structure, was even more terrible than the 
epoch of invasions. The poor classes and the serfs 
and chattels, as we might suppose, suffered most. 
The tenth century marks the triumph of the feudal 
regime, and with this triumph chattelhood (mancip- 
ium) disappears from the laws and the usage of the 
oppressive masters. The chattels now became hered- 



FRANKS : FRENCH. 213 

itary bondmen or serfs, and were no longer objects of 
sale or of traffic. They could not be separated from 
their families, but were established in villages ; and 
the slave traffic was carried on solely in Saracens and 
other heathen. 

In all other respects serfdom preserved almost all 
the most revolting features of ancient domestic sla- 
very. The feudal lord employed the serfs as tillers 
of his soil, and the harvests they raised were the chief 
sources of his income ; while they likewise formed his 
followers in his feuds with feudal neighbors or with 
his lords paramount — the counts, dukes, and kings. 
The feudal lord did not sell his serfs — as the churches, 
synods, and councils all united in condemning the 
traffic in Christians. 

The present serf, tiller, and laborer, all over Western 
Europe, was the younger, outlawed member of the hu- 
man family, and so now are our Southern chattels. 

For a long time the difference between serfdom and 
ancient chattelhood was discernible only with great 
difficulty. The collar worn by chattels since the time 
of Augustus remained on the necks of the serfs (and 
these, too, not adscripti glebce), with the expression — 
" I belong," or with the name of the master cut there- 
on. This was the custom in England with the Anglo- 
Saxon serfs -of the Athelstanes and the Cedrics, so that 
the ancestry of the haughty Anglo-Saxon slaveholding 
American barons of the present day wore collars! 

The feudal order was firmly established. Below the 
social hierarchy, composed of free fiefs, and estates 



214: SLAVERY IN" HISTORY. 

belonging to nobles, churches, and monasteries (all of 
them free from taxation and public servitude), descend 
another social grade, whose only badges were humilia- 
tions, sufferings, toils, and martyrdom. Servitude and 
serfdom had similar gradations among the peasantry 
and workmen bound to the soil of their feudal master 
as existed among the barons, nobles, abbots, etc., in 
their various relations and duties of vassalage. 

A few towns and boroughs began to spring up from 
the same social soil whence arose those of Germany. 
But the immense majority of the nobles and owners of 
cities considered their inhabitants, at the best, as but 
half free, as tributaries or censitaires, and continually 
attempted to plunge them deeper into servitude and 
villeinage. The remnants of the independent yeo- 
manry, free tenantry, copyholders, etc., rapidly dis- 
appeared. These descendants of the conquerors — of 
kindred race, too, with the barons — accepted servitude 
in order to find patronage and alleviation from further 
oppression, or else sought refuge in the cities and towns, 
abandoning their homesteads, which were seized by 
the feudal baron and annexed to his estate. 

All along the twelve or fifteen centuries which ex- 
tend from, the decline of the Greek and Roman repub- 
lics and the first days of the empire down to the 
consolidation of feudalism, it is evident that similar 
causes were ever in operation, depriving the poor of 
their property, their labor, and finally of their liberty 
— a result, too, brought about in every case in an 
identical manner. In this, as in many other things, 



FRANKS: FRENCH, 215 

the history of the human race and its disorders and 
woes is a record of almost continuous analogies. 

The. smaller feudal masters, afterward called hober- 
aux, were generally the most cruel and inhuman then, 
as well as afterward, during the long- protracted centu- 
ries of serfdom of the French peasantry. Tyranny 
always becomes fiercer and more maddened in propor- 
tion as the circle of its power and action is diminished. 
Is it not so also on American slave plantations ? 

It has been already mentioned, that the kings and 
the more powerful feudal vassals began to erect towns, 
and that these towns served as refuges for the home- 
less, and also for the serfs. The lesser nobles and the 
feudalized clergy often upbraided the kings for thus 
depopulating their estates ; while the barons who 
owned the cities soon exasperated their inhabitants by 
their exactions and cruelties. 

Such were the prominent domestic and economic 
features of the times of feudalism and chivalry in 
France, as over the whole of Europe. It is for other 
reasons that, in the minds of some, a halo still sur- 
rounds their memory and their name. But, pene- 
trating behind that halo, what a horrid spectacle of 
tyranny, oppression, and cruelty meets the eye ! The 
sham chivalry of our Slave States has not even the 
shadow of such an aureola to hide its hideousness. 
The cruel and reckless barons sprang from a reckless 
race, in an age of darkness : they had no other traditions 
from the past, no other example before them. But the 
American chivalry and knight-errants of slavery spit 



216 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

on all the noble traditions transmitted by their sires. 
They have before their eyes the spectacle of freedom 
generating prosperity in all ages. And yet with all 
this do they deliberately turn their backs upon the 
light, and rush heedlessly toward dark barbarity. 

The feudal rights of the barons in the products and 
earnings of the tradesmen and workmen, as well as in 
the person and labor of the serfs, together with their 
right of civil and criminal jurisdiction, were all the 
result of successive usurpations. 

Toward the end of the eleventh, and especially in 
the twelfth century, the cities and towns rose against 
their feudal oppressors. This great movement was 
not preconcerted, nor was it instigated by outside con- 
spirators. The cities, goaded by exactions and op- 
pressions, rose separately, and each one on its own ac- 
count. The impulse came from man's natural aspira- 
tions for freedom and justice, and his hatred of tyranny. 
The true conspirators were the nobles who oppressed 
the cities. Louis VI., of immortal memory, aided the 
cities in their efforts to form themselves into com- 
munes, gave them charters, and relieved them from 
the power of the barons ; in short, he did every thing 
possible to undermine the power of the nobles^ and 
prevent them from pillagiug, torturing, and murdering 
the people. But the emancipation of the cities was 
finally achieved only by blood ; and the kings, moved 
by humanity as well as policy, supported the citizens 
in their efforts, and thus reduced the tyrannic and un- 
ruly barons and nobles. The nobles, small and great, 



franks: FRENCH. 217 

in France as in other parts of Europe, resisted with 
arms the communal emancipation. They proclaimed 
and treated as rebels and subverters of order and 
society, all who tried to reconquer their liberty, as 
well as all those who advocated the cause of the op- 
pressed. Does not the same phenomenon reappear in 
our own time and country ? 

With the emancipation of the cities and the forma- 
tion of communes, civilization began to illumine the 
horizon of France. But this great social event had not 
such a direct influence bn the condition of the rural 
populations in France as it had in Italy. Still the 
serfs found a safe refuge in the now independent cities. 

The crusades acted in the same way on the condi- 
tion of the peasantry in France, as they did in Ger- 
many, Flanders, etc. 

Successively, kings began to regulate and alleviate 
the condition of the serfs on their domains, gradually 
interposing to limit the power of the nobles over their 
serfs. A chronicler of that time (twelfth century), 
says : " Cetera censuum exactiones quae servis infiigi 
solent (nobles) omnimodis vacent." The French le- 
gists of the thirteenth century, inspired by Ulpian and 
Eoman law, the study of which was again revived 
by a decree of Louis IX., declared that every man on 
the soil of France is or ought to be free, by right as 
well as by the law of nature. Subsequently this axiom 
was considered applicable even to Saracens, Mahom- 
edans, Africans, and all races, creeds, and nationalities. 
Louis IX. was the friend of the oppressed and the re- 
10 



218 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

dresser of the wrongs of the peasantry. He abolished 
the more oppressive servitudes in the domains, and 
tried to humanize the nobles. 

The great principle of liberty asserted by the legists 
of the thirteenth century, was' in the fourteenth em- 
bodied in a law or edict of Louis X., which decreed 
that the serfs might pay off their personal and rural 
obligation to the nobles and become free tenants. 
This law was very generally carried out in the royal do- 
mains, but did not find much favor among the nobles 
or in the feudalized church. At that time, moreover, 
many serfs and peasants, from poverty, mental deg- 
radation, and shiftlessness, and others from distrust 
of the law and the nobles, refused the freedom offered 
to them. In several provinces, disorders even resulted 
from their resistance, especially in those places where 
the conditions dictated by the seneschals (royal over- 
seers), nobles, and priests, were so oppressive as to 
make free tenantry no better than bondage ; and for 
this reason, also, serfs who had obtained their liberty 
often returned to servitude. In defence of American 
chattelhood, it is asserted that many chattels spurn the 
idea of emancipation ; that many of them, when eman- 
cipated, return, of their own choice, into slavery, and 
that they are too degraded to appreciate freedom, and 
too shiftless to achieve its rewards. These very rea- 
sons, based on facts similar to those now set forth, 
were urged by the French feudal masters against the 
efforts of the government to liberate the oppressed 
whites. 



FKANKS: FKENCH. 219 

The consequences of a bodily as of a social disorder 
are frequently of protracted duration. The oppression 
of centuries so destroys the mind and manhood of the 
oppressed that they consider slavery their normal con- 
dition, even as physical monstrosities have sometimes 
been regarded by their possessors as the symbols of 
beauty and health. Such incurables may even be 
found among the now free descendants of social, po- 
litical, national, and legal bondmen — among the de- 
scendants of those who in former times were covered 
with contempt, and who suffered unutterable social 
degradation. Such are the Irish, en masse, and some 
others who escape oppression in Europe only to sup- 
port slavery in America. 

Personal serfdom and vassalage began to be gradu- 
ally modified ; but on the estates of the clergy and 
nobility it lasted till near the eighteenth century, still 
preserving several of its worst features. Nowhere in 
Europe was the peasant so long and so grievously op- 
pressed as in France.; nowhere did he take such ter- 
rible but just revenge. Insurrections of the peasantry 
in various parts of France form an almost uninter- 
rupted historic series, of which the great revolution 
was the fitting climax. 

The repeated hagaudies of the Gallic peasantry 
have been already mentioned : the next revolt was 
in the tenth century, when the serfs and peasants 
of Neustrse (Normandy) rose against the Northmen, 
who had just established themselves, and who tried 
to transform them into chattels; and another rising 



220 SLAVERY m HISTORY. 

took place about the same time in Brittany. Beside 
many partial uprisings against particular strongholds 
or districts, the most general and most celebrated 
were those of the jpastouraux, in the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries — one of which was directed prin- 
cipally against the feudalized clergy — and the repeat- 
ed jacqueries. Indeed, during the fourteenth cen- 
tury, the whole of Europe might be said to be di- 
vided into two great hostile camps : the nobles with 
their exactions and oppressions forming one, and the 
laborers, peasants and serfs, resisting their oppressors 
with battle-axe and fire, forming the other. And thus 
the oppressed everywhere hewed out their path to 
freedom and civilization. \ 

The fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
had their various revolts, sometimes evoked by gov- 
ernmental measures and maladministration, but far 
oftener stirred up by the reckless and cruel treatment 
of the laborer by the nobles — against whom both the 
law and royal authority were too often inefficient and 
powerless. 

Then came the epoch of atonement and of justice 
— 1789-1793. Then germinated the seeds which had 
been sown for centuries in the social soil by the op- 
pressors, and then, too, was gathered the bloody har- 
vest. 

The present rural population or peasantry of France, 
the descendants of serfs and chattels, now possess the 
same civil and political rights as any other class in 
the nation — rights more ample than are enjoyed by 



FRANKS: FRENCH. 221 

any other peasantry in Europe. They have, of course, 
still to suffer various evils arising from the common 
imperfection of all social structures; but no special 
degradation is attached* to their birth or their condi- 
tion. 

The first glimpses of mental culture, in the earliest 
mediaeval night, came from the monasteries — from 
monks who generally belonged to the conquered race, 
or sprang from chattels and serfs. Indeed, almost all 
the modern European civilization was elaborated in 
the cities by the so-called middle classes, and by 
peasants. Luther and Kepler were the sons of poor 
peasants ; and the sires of the immense majority of 
the European middle classes, at one time or another, 
were chattels, serfs, or bondmen, who were for ages 
considered and treated as brutes by the nobles and 
barons. All over Europe many of the genealogies 
of aristocratic families ascend to slaves, serfs and 
villeins. 



BKITONS, ANGLO-SAXON'S, ENGLISH. 223 



XIX. 
BKITONS, ANGLO-SAXONS, ENGLISH. 

AUTHORITIES I 

Domesday-look, Sharon ■ Turner, Lapperiberg, Pauli, Eallam, Brougham, 
Vaughan, etc. 

The social condition of the Britons previous to the 
invasion of Caesar was in all probability similar to that 
of their kindred Gauls. Thev lived in clans ; the 
soil was held by a tenure similar to that which pre- 
vailed among the Gauls, and was tilled by clansmen 
or free laborers. Slavery was then, if possible, even 
more insignificant among the Britons than among the 
Gauls ; and the slaves consisted of criminals and pris- 
oners of war, and were the common property of the 
clan. The laboring classes were not impoverished, 
nor were they dependent upon the chiefs as in Gaul 
at the time of the Roman conquest. For various 
reasons Koine's influence did not operate so fatally 
on the Britons as it did on the Gauls ; neither the 
culture of Rome nor her disorganizing and oppres- 
sive administration permeated Britain to the same 
extent as they did the rest of the empire. Still Ro- 
man rule seems to have altered somewhat the primi- 
tive relations between the chiefs and their clansmen, 
impoverishing the latter and corrupting the former. 
The Roman rule was propitious to slavery; it sur- 



224 SLAVEKY IN HISTOKY. 

rounded the powerful natives with dependents and 
chattels, while the poor gradually lost their freedom, 
and began to cultivate the soil less for their own sake 
than on account of their chiefs. The dissolution of 
former social relations was effected and the impover- 
ishment of the people fearfully increased, by the un- 
interrupted invasions of the Picts and Scots, and by 
the Anglo-Saxon conquest. 

The Anglo-Saxons, spreading over the land, en- 
slaved its former owners, selling them abroad or 
making them work for the conquerors at home. The 
/Anglo-Saxons planted on the soil of Britain their 
German mode of life and their social organism in all 
its details. They brought with them their bondmen 
and slaves, their laws and usages relating to slavery, 
to the possession of the soil, and to composition for 
crime (all of which have been explained in former 
pages). Under the Anglo-Saxons and Danes, the 
chattels consisted of the descendants of the slaves 
existing in Roman times, as well as natives newly 
enslaved, criminals, debtors and captives taken in 
war. The Anglo-Saxon families also had slaves of 
Scotch and Welsh birth, generally from the borders ; 
while, on the other hand, many Anglo-Saxons were 
kept in bondage by the Scotch and "Welsh. Turner 
says : " It is well known that a large proportion of 
the Anglo-Saxon population was in a state of slavery ; 
they were conveyed promiscuously with the cattle." 

The Anglo-Saxon slaves were called theow esne and 
wite-theows, or penal slaves. Their condition was at- 



BKITONS, ANGLO-SAXONS, ENGLISH. 225 

tended with all the horrors of slavery. They were 
kept in chains, were whipped, branded, and wore col- 
lars. They were sold in the markets, especially in 
London, and were at times exported beyond the sea, 
and found their way even to the markets of Italy and 
Rome. Every one knows that it was the exposition 
for sale of Anglo-Saxon slaves in the Roman mar- 
ket which resulted in the introduction of Christianity 
into Britain. Christianity softened the savage customs 
of the Anglo-Saxons, and greatly promoted emanci- 
pation ; and this again increased the number of free- 
men and half-freemen, which formed the lower class 
of the population. 

The division into classes — castes almost — was very 
rigidly observed by the Anglo-Saxons. The powers 
and rights of nobles, and of those who reached a high 
position as royal officials or owners of extensive landed 
property, were very great. The possession of land 
gave a higher political status, and conferred greater 
power among the Anglo-Saxons than among any of 
the other German tribes settled throughout Europe. 

The free yeomen, or owners of land in fee simple, 
sought protection from the hlaford or mighty lord. 
For this they bartered away, partially, both their free- 
dom and their right to the land — as was customary 
also among the German and all other ancient nations. 
The Anglo-Saxon yeomen were, in general, in a sub- 
ordinate condition ; they had no law, and their free- 
dom consisted principally in having the right to 
change masters. The tradesmen also were, for the 
10* 



22(5 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

most part, in a servile state, and were manumitted like 
other chattels. Some of the manumitted slaves became 
agricultural laborers and hired land from the clergy, 
the great, the tljanes or the ealdormen, paying them an 
annual rent in produce or money ; but many of them 
also went into the towns and became burghers. Some 
of the burghers, also, were subject to barons and other 
lords, as the king ; indeed, the burghers generally were 
not actual freeholders, and, if they were free, often had 
not wholly escaped the domestic service of their mas- 
ters. The condition of the immense majority of An- 
glo-Saxons w T as therefore far from real freedom. 

The Norman conquest transformed many landlords 
into tenants, while the humbler classes passed into the 
hands of the new masters. They became the tenants 
and laborers of the Norman, for whom otherwise the 
conquered land would have been worthless. But the 
Norman conquest rendered Saxon servitude so gall- 
ing, that villeinage was nearly equal to chattelhood. 

The " Domesday-book" gives 25,000 as the number 
of slaves in England. The great bulk of the rural 
population was composed of bondmen, or villeins un- 
der various designations — as hordiers, gebicrs,cotsetlas, 
etc. — who were compelled to pay oppressive imposts, 
and submit to various degrading and oppressing ser- 
vitudes. These oppressions and exactions bore most 
heavily on the Anglo-Saxon population. 

Slaves and serfs attached to the soil might be sold 
in the market-place, at the pleasure of their owners. 
Husbands sold their wives, and parents, unable'or un- 



BRITONS, ANGLO-SAXONS, ENGLISH. 227 

willing to support their children, might dispose of 
them in the same manner. The English slave-dealer 
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, sold- his Anglo- 
Saxon commodities to the Irish. A law enacted in 
1102, prohibited this " wicked trade;" but the law was 
eluded, the trade continued, and when Henry II. 
invaded Ireland, he found English slaves there, whom 
he manumitted. In order to increase the revenue, 
as also from other motives of policy, the royal power 
in England, as all over Europe, generally favored the 
oppressed ; its tendency always was to curb the arbi- 
trary exactions of the barons, to promote emancipa- 
tion, and generally to aid the serfs. William the 
Conqueror ordered that the lords should not deprive 
the husbandmen of their land ; he enacted regulations 
to prevent arbitrary enslavement, and prohibited the 
sale of slaves out of the country. He also enacted a 
law which provided that the residence of any serf or 
slave for a year and a day, without being claimed, in 
any city, burgh, walled town or castle, should entitle 
him to perpetual liberty. 

An independent freeholding yeomanry existed in 
comparatively small numbers. The recklessness of 
the feudal barons obliged the yeomanry, for the sake 
of protection, to render allegiance to the manor, and 
thus, about a century after the conquest, almost all 
the small homesteads disappeared. The conquered 
population held their property, not by absolute right, 
but by a tenure from the lord. Thus all individual 
freedom, except that of the nobles, became either en- 



228 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

tirely lost, or more and more contracted, till finally 
time and circumstance partly loosened, partly de- 
stroyed, the bonds which held the nation in slavery. 
In England as in the whole of Europe, feudal oppres- 
sion was the growth of a very few generations ; but 
it has required many hundreds of years to destroy it. 
A disease may be caught in an hour — years may be 
required for its cure. For the conquered race, the 
Norman had all the contempt common to conquerors. 
Macaulay says that when Henry I. married an Anglo- 
Saxon of princely lineage, many of the barons re- 
garded it as a Virginia planter might regard mar- 
riage with a quadroon girl. But personal and econom- 
ical interests obliged the barons to relent in their 
treatment of their serfs and chattels ; and many of 
them were allowed under certain conditions to cul- 
tivate small portions of land. 

The Saxon servile class, embraced under the gen- 
eral name of villeins, by and by began to have a 
permanent and legal interest in the land they cultiva- 
ted, tilling it under the condition of a copyhold. The 
number of tenants on the manorial lands thus rapidly 
increased. Bat for a long period, even though the 
law declared that no man was a villein, still less a 
chattel, unless a master claimed him (and while to all 
others he was a freeman, eligible to have and hold 
property), still the nobles often seized and appropria- 
ted to themselves the property of the poorer class. 

The laws under the Plantagenets, although in some 
respects hard for the villeins, indirectly favored their 



BRITONS, ANGLO-SAXONS, ENGLISH. 229 

emancipation, and threw many obstacles in the way 
of suits brought to reclaim fugitives. 

The influence of the cities on the condition of the serfs 
in England was similar to that which they exercised 
everywhere else in Europe. As under the Anglo-Sax- 
ons, so under the Normans, the inhabitants of the 
cities were originally serfs and villeins, or their de- 
scendants. The Plantagenets were unceasingly at 
war, and the enlistment of soldiers opened up an av- 
enue to emancipation! ; and predial and feudal servitude 
of every kind ended forever with the performance 
of military service on land or sea. So also the serf 
or villein obtained freedom in various ways — through 
the law of refuge in cities, by being drafted into the 
royal service, and finally by the tenure of the land 
on which the baron may have established him at his 
own baronial pleasure. Thus by degrees arose the 
right of copyhold lands ; and Edward III. prohibited 
the lords from appropriating such lands when service 
was rendered or the rent regularly paid. 

Forced servitude steadily diminished, and the es- 
tate-holders complained that the cities and towns 
absorbed the labor necessary for agriculture. In 
1345, Parliament regulated the wages for all kinds of 
farm-work, and made labor obligatory when paid for 
in money, but not as personal servitude. Gradually 
the economic and social relations became more and 
more those of employer and laborer, and less and less 
those of master and serf. Still the nobles and estate- 
holders continually evaded the laws, and preserved, 



230 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

as much as they possibly could, their oppressive rights. 
Against these the peasants protested by various petty 
insurrections. 

Wat Tyler and his peasant-followers demanded that 
the existing remnants of villeinage should be abolished, 
and that the land-rent be payable in money and not 
in personal services, and also that the trades and mar- 
ket-places be free from vexatious tolls and imposts. 
But Wat Tyler fell — the insurrection was suppressed 
— the barons and lords compelled the king to break 
the promises he had made, and the " shoeless ribalds," 
as the nobles called the insurgent rustics, were forced 
back to their former condition . But in a little over 
a century afterward, villeinage wholly disappeared. 
Contumely, oppression, and even butchery proved in 
the long run quite powerless against the efforts of the 
oppressed classes to reconquer their freedom. 

The wars of the roses dissolved many of the old liens, 
destroyed various domestic relations, and yet, with all 
their devastations, on the whole rather promoted the 
emancipation of land and labor. Richard III. made 
various regulations favorable to the-peasantry and 
destructive of the still remaining vestiges of servitude. 
On this account, as well as for other reasons, some 
historians defend the memory of Richard III. ; and it 
really seems that at first Richard was a good and up- 
right man. But violent passions, lust of power, ha- 
tred of whoever opposed him or stood in his way, drove 
him step by step to measures of violence and to 
murder; and so he stands in history, a hideous and 



BKITONS, ANGLO-SAXOXS : ENGLISH. 231 

accursed monster in human form, reeking in the blood 
of his victims. JNTation^ and parties often run the same 
career of violence and crime as individuals. Let the 
pro-slavery faction of to-day, which already begins to 
move in the bloody tracks of Richard, take warning! 

Under the Tudors but few traces of the former vil- 
leinage are to be found ; still it survived until the 
reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. But throughout the 
whole of the centuries during which rural servitude 
was slowly but steadily passing away, relics of a very 
stringent personal servitude, almost equal to slavery, 
lingered in the baronial manors and castles, in the 
personal relation between the masters and their re- 
tainers and menials. Against these remains of rural 
villeinage, vassalage, and slavery, the Henries and 
Elizabeths exercised their royal power, and issued 
decrees bearing on the subject generally, as well as 
others relating to special cases.* 

It is not necessary to record here — what every stu- 
dent in history knows — that in proportion as servitude 
began to decay, the prosperity of England increased, 
and that from its final abolition in every form dates 
the uninterrupted growth in wealth and power of the 
English nation. The abolition, of rural servitude gave 
a vigorous impulse to agriculture, and secured to it 
its present high social significance ; and now the old 

* Certain pro-slavery organs and small yelpers (see "Southern 
Wealth," etc., New York, 1860) defame the memory of the Henries 
and Elizabeths for their generous action toward the serfs, forgetting that 
such royal decrees, in many cases, liberated their own direct ancestors. 



232 SLAVERY IN" HISTOEY. 

nobility all over Europe are proud to be agriculturists. 
Agriculture is now a science, and it is by freedom that 
it has thus reached the highest honor in the hierarchy 
of knowledge and labor. 

Through such various stages passed the Anglo- 
Saxons and the English people, in their transition 
from chattelhood and various forms of personal servi- 
tude, to freedom. The present inhabitants of English 
towns, as well as the free yeomanry and tenants — in 
brief, all the English commercial, trading, farming 
and working classes — have emerged from slavery, 
serfdom or servility. In the course of centuries the 
oppressed have achieved the liberty of their persons 
and labor, and the freedom of the soil : they have con- 
quered political status and political rights ; and their 
descendants peopled the American colonies, and here 
finally conquered the paramount right of national in- 
dependence. The genuine freemen of the great West- 
ern Kepublic are not ashamed but proud of such a 
lineage of toil and victory. These freemen now and 
here again boldly and nobly enter the lists to com- 
bat with human bondage in every shape; and thus 
they remain true to the holy traditions which they have 
inherited from their fathers. 



SLAVI, SLAVONIANS, SLAVES, EDSSIANS. 233 



XX 



SLAVI SLAVONIANS, SLAVES, EUS- 

SIANS. 

AUTHORITIES^: 

Schajfarick, Corpus Scriptorum Uistorice Byzantinaz, Nestor, Fischer, 
Karamzin, Gerettzoff, etc. 

At what epoch the Slavic race left the common 
home of the Aryas and immigrated into Europe, will 
forever remain an insoluble mystery. Some ethnolo- 
gists suppose the Slavi to have preceded the Gauls, 
and think they find their traces all over central 
Europe, on the Po, and around the Adriatic Gulf. At 
all events, the Slavi are very ancient occupants of 
European soil, and without doubt took possession of 
it long before the Germans. The region between the 
Danube, the Vistula and the Volga, was from time 
immemorial, as it still is, distinctly a Slavic region, 
although at some previous time, it was probably oc- 
cupied by the Yellow or Finnic races. Subsequently 
the Slavi covered the lands between the Vistula and 
the Elba (now again lost), and colonized the southern 
shores of the Danube. 

From immemorial time, the Slavi were an agricul- 
tural people ; and perhaps they were the first who 
cultivated the virgin soil of Central and Northern 
Europe. The Slavi lived in villages, and were or- 



J 



234 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

ganized in rural communes, electing their chiefs, 
(joi(j>an) or ancients {starschina). As early as the 
time of Herodotus, the commerce in grain was very 
active at the mouth of the Dnieper, and then, as at the 
present day, the Slavi imported their wheat to Byzan- 
tium (Constantinople), Greece, and Asia Minor. 

The region occupied by the Slavi, from the Yolga, 
along the Don (or Tanais) and the Danube, was the 
highway of the various branches of the Mongolian, 
Finnic, Uralian, Scythic, or Turanian family, in 
their invasions. All these old and classic denomina- 
tions for the inhabitants of Asia, north of Baktria 
and the Himalayan mountains, are now merged in 
that of Tartars. So, in remote antiquity, Tartar 
Scythians, mixed with Slavi, dwelt on the Tanais, 
north of the Danube, and very likely on the plains 
east of the Dnieper. Other invasions of Asiatic Tar- 
tars, as Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Maghyars, Petschene- 
gues, Polovtzy, TJgri, Turks and Tartars proper — 
doubtless early familiarized the primitive agricultural 
Slavi with the horrors of war, oppression and enslave- 
ment. And among the slaves which, under the name 
of Scythians, the- Phenicians and Greeks trafficked 
in, there were doubtless some of Slavic origin. 

It was very late when the Slavic race began to take 
part in the European or Western movement. Neither in 
the remotest times, nor in the great Western impulse 
daring the early part of the Christian era, do the 
Slavi appear as invaders or conquerors on their own 
account. For many centuries, the Slavi in their rela- 



SLAVI, SLAVONIANS, SLAVES, KUSSIANS. 235 

tions with other races and nations, must rather be 
considered a passive or recipient than an expanding 
or creative race. For these reasons slavery does not 
seem to have been indigenous in those parts of the 
Slavic family which constituted independent groups, 
at the time when the race first dawns npon the 
horizon of histor}^. 

The Emperor Mauritius, in the sixth century, in 
giving an account of the defensive warfare of the 
Slavi, says that when they made prisoners in war, they 
kept them as such for a year, and afterward left it to 
their own choice either to settle among them or return 
to their native country. Thus, at an epoch when per- 
petual war raged all over the world, when from time 
immemorial prisoners of war everywhere formed the 
bulk of the slaves for domestic labor and for traffic, 
the Slavi alone were humane toward their captives. 

The Slavi, however, became diseased by slavery, 
partly from external infection — partly from the inter- 
nal development of events similar in character to 
those pointed out in other nations as the origin of 
slavery ; and having once taken hold of the nation, it 
worked in a similar way as in other lands. For here 
again we see the ever recurring analogy between the 
origin, nature, and workings of social and bodily dis- 
eases — the same everywhere, under the equator as 
around the pole. 

In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Germans, 
under the Saxon emperors, carried on a war of con- 
quest, almost of extermination, against the Slavi, 



v/ 



236 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

from the Baltic along the Elbe to the Styrian and 
Carinthian Alps. The number of war-prisoners and 
peaceful settlers carried away and enslaved was im- 
mense. Many of them were sold in the Baltic ports, 
others in Yenice, others again were distributed in 
the interior of Germany, and in such vast numbers 
that from them arose the general designation of 
" slaves" to all chattels of whatever race ; and such 
was the origin of the word, which was afterward in- 
corporated into all the languages of Europe. * Subse- 
quently the harshest feudal tenures regulated the con- 
dition of the rural population of Bohemia, Moravia 
and Hungary, which did not terminate till the events 
of lS4:8-'4:9 put a final end to villeinage (robot) in all 
these countries. 

The Poles and Russians were unaffected by feudal- 
ism in any of its social or constructive developments. 
Up to the seventh and eighth centuries, the Poles con- 
tinued to elect their chiefs from all classes of the* peo- 
ple — merchants and workmen. The prince or chief 
Leschko was a merchant ; while Piast was a wheel- 
wright, and became the founder of a long line of kings. 
But wars created the men of the sword, or nobility ; 
and then in Poland, as everywhere else, the nobles 
began to encroach upon the rights and property of 
the weak, and to oppress the agriculturists, the free 

* The name of slave in the Slavi language, is derived either from 
slava, "renown," or from slowo, "the verb." It is supposed that the 
Slavi called themselves thus as having the gift of speech, of the verb, iu 
contradistinction to those speaking an unintelligible language, whom 
they called niemy, " mute," wherefrom nemets, "a-G-erman." 



SLAVI, SLAVONIANS, SLAVES, RUSSIANS. 237 

yeomen (kmets, kmetones), and the husbandmen (gos- 
podarsch) ; but neither of these were ever transformed 
into chattels. "When the Poles became a distinct his- 
torical nation, chattelhood was disappearing from 
Europe. Their contests were principally with other 
Slavic nations and with the Germans ; and no traces 
are to be found of the enslavement of prisoners of 
war. Their heathen neighbors were the Prussians, 
the Iadzwingi, and Lithuanians ; and captives made 
among them were used either in public labors or 
strictly in domestic service, as were also prisoners of 
war in after-times made from the Tartars and Turks. 
When these prisoners became Christians, their chat- 
telhood was at an end. 

The name for a war-prisoner is niewolnik, "one 
deprived of the exercise of his will." When the 
Polish agriculturists were subjugated by the nobles, 
and their condition became that of villeins, or ad- 
scripti glebes, they began to be called hholop (a name 
most likely borrowed from the Russian), also poddany, 
"subject;" and the rural relations had the general 
name of poddanstwo, " subjection." 

The Biblical narrative of the curse of Noah upon 
Ham furnished an easy justification for reducing the 
people to bondage. Peasant (kholop) and Ham became 
synonymous in the mouths of the nobles and the 
clergy, who generally sprang from the nobility. The 
oppression of the nobles was absolute during the do- 
mestic wars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 
The people resisted, but after various partial but 



238 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

bloody struggles, the peasantry were subjected. In 
the royal domains the old yeomen (kmetones) still pre- 
served their lands and some of their rights, and to 
the last days of Poland, the peasantry of the domains 
never became, either legally or in fact, adscripti glebce. 
Casimir the Great, a Polish king of the middle of the 
fourteenth century, protected the rights of the peas- 
antry against the oppressions of the nobles, and ad- 
vised the peasants to defend themselves with flint and 
steel. He won the name of "king of the poor op- 
pressed peasants " (Jcrol JcMqpJcow) : perhaps it was the 
gratitude of the oppressed which conferred this title 
upon him, or perhaps it may have been a sneering epi- 
thet applied by the nobles. Goading indeed was the 
oppression of the nobles, and crushing in the extreme 
the servitude of the peasantry ; but it never reached 
the point of chattelhood, excepting in rare cases of 
absolute lawlessness. 

The kmetones, or free yeomen, and the husbandmen 
still generally remained in possession of the lands 
which were once their immediate property, but now 
only as possessors at the pleasure of the master — pay- 
ing him a rent or tribute, in kind or labor, and de- 
prived of the right of changing their domicile. The 
master could, at pleasure, elevate the tenant to a 
freeholder, or emancipate any of his household ser- 
vants. The cities did not furnish such a sure refuge 
for runaways as did the cities in other parts of Eu- 
rope. Military service, here as elsewhere, gave per- 
petual liberty to the bondman. 



SLA VI, SLAVONIANS, SLAVES, KUSSIANS. 2S9 

The Polish nobility had supreme sway, and were 
all in all; they constituted the nation, the legislators 
and the sovereign — even the kings being controlled 
by the nobles and their interests. The nobles have 
paid dearly for their tyranny and oppression, as they 
themselves now admit that serfdom was the principal 
cause of the downfall of Poland. 

After the dismemberment of Poland, Friederich 
"Wilhelm III. restored personal liberty to the peasantry 
in the parts of the kingdom which were allotted to 
Prussia ; in the Austrian portion, the condition of the 
peasantry was ameliorated and their personal liberty 
partially restored by Joseph II. ; while that part of 
Poland which, at the end of the eighteenth century, 
was annexed, or rather reannexed, to Russia — as Lith- 
uania and the Russian provinces — came under the 
control of the regulations prevailing in. the empire. 
In Poland proper, all the peasantry are now free and 
enjoy full civil rights ; and even the soil tilled by the 
peasants will soon be fully freed from every kind of 
predial servitude attached to its possession : and thus 
the peasantry will recover at least a part of the prop- 
erty taken from them by violence or subterfuge long 
centuries ago. 

The Slavonians in what is now called Russia proper 
— from Lake Peypus and the Waldai Heights down to 
the banks of the Dnieper — lived, from time immemo- 
rial, in villages ; these, again, were formed into smaller 
or larger districts (ohschtschestwo, wolost), which elect- 
ed for themselves their chiefs or heads (golowa). 



240 SLAVEKY IN HISTOKY. 

Among the few cities in Russia, the great republi- 
can and commercial emporiums of Novgorod and. 
Pskoff — well known and flourishing at the dawn of the 
mediaeval epoch — formed the centres of that Slavic 
region. No nobility existed then, no slaves, and no 
bondmen. In 862 the republicans of Novgorod, dis- 
tracted by domestic feuds and party dissensions, in- 
vited a Scandinavian, Nordman, or Yarigegue leader, 
called Rurick, to take upon himself the government 
of their republic. Rurick and his followers extended 
the Yariaegue supremacy as far as the southern region 
of the Dnieper, and Kieff became the capital of the 
Russian empire. At the commencement of this Ya- 
rigegue rule, no positive change was introduced into 
the internal organism of society, or the condition of 
the population. Rurick and his descendants were 
elected or confirmed by the Slavonic people, and 
he governed the cities and districts through his 
companions-in-arms or lieutenants. These, together 
with the direct descendants of Rurick, under the 
various designations of princes (hniaz and mouja), 
vassals, and warriors, were the founders of the Russian 
nobility. This, however, could not be called feudal- 
ism, as these functionaries corresponded somewhat 
with the counts and missi do??iinici, or lieutenant- 
deputies of Charlemagne. The grand-princes or grand- 
dukes of Ivieff made war upon various tribes, mostly 
those of Mongolian or Tartar origin, and swept south 
of the Dnieper along the shores of the Black Sea down 
to the Caucasus ; they repeatedly invaded the B^yzan- 



SLAVI, SLAVONIANS, SLAVES, RUSSIANS. 241 

tine empire, sometimes reaching even the suburbs of 
Constantinople. Then the war-prisoners and captives 
became domestic chattels, and chattels were also pur- 
chased from neighboring tribes and imported into 
Russia. 

The name for a chattel, of whatever origin, is rah, 
raba, probably derived from rabota, "labor." Such 
robs were employed in various kinds of labor, b - 
principally in clearing the forests and cultivating th< 
soil for their masters. Through contact with the B;> 
zantine empire Christianity came into Russia, beside* 
various other usages. 

At this epoch, a new form of servitude appeared 
among the Russians ; perhaps it was borrowed from 
the old society and civilization, or perhaps it originated 
from a new concatenation of circumstances : it was 
servitude by mutual agreement or Jcabala, by which 
one man gave up his person, labor, and liberty to an- 
other. This kind of bondman was called Jcholqp. His 
servitude was usually contracted for a limited time, 
though sometimes for life ; but was never inherited. 
Debts could be paid by the habala writ. 

The poor freeman could become a Jcholqp by his own 
choice, or he could give up his children as kholops, as 
was then the custom among all nations, heathen and 
Christian. Such Jcabala-kholop, or servile person, could 
not be sold or disposed of in any way, as his servitude 
was limited in duration by specified time or by his 
death. Sometimes freemen choose servitude in order 
to escape worse conditions. Early in the domestic 
11 



242 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

economy of the nation, free tenants are found *vho 
hired lands for a year or more, paying the rent (obrog) 
in money, or binding themselves to cultivate half of 
the land for the proprietor and half for themselves. A 
subsequent law prohibited any such free tenants from 
contracting any work or Jcdbala servitude with the 
landowners. The contracts of free tenants were obli- 
gatory for a year from St. George's day (April 17) ; but 
otherwise they could change their domicile or land at 
pleasure. The laws of the tenth and eleventh centu- 
ries stringently prohibit the infliction of any kind of 
corporal punishment on such free tenants. In short, 
these tenants had full civil liberty and full civil 
rights ; they could own lands, and could become mem- 
bers of any rural or urbane community, practice any 
handicraft, etc. 

Probably it was the nobles,4he rich, the higher offi- 
cials, who first established chattels (rabs) on their lands 
as tillers. From these originated, beside the rob, the 
krepostnoi kholqp, " a serf strengthened or chained to 
his master," krepok signifying "strong," "strength- 
ened," " attached by force" — krepost, " stronghold," 
etc. According to the laws collected or enacted by 
Vladimir and Yaroslaw in the tenth and eleventh cen- 
turies, rob and Jcrepostnoi kholqp were the descendants 
of prisoners of war, or of those who were bought as 
slaves and imported as such into Russia, and also the 
descendants of those who unconditionally married a 
slave woman ; while the public, grand-ducal slaves or 
rabs were condemned criminals. 



SLAVI, SLAVONIANS, SLAVES, RUSSIANS. 243 

Free tenants on the lands of the nobles, individual 
freeholders (odnodwortsy), etc., and the numerous rural 
communities owning land unconditionally and paying 
therefrom tribute — rather as public taxation — to the 
ducal treasury, constituted the rural population of 
Russia. From the time of Yaroslaw to the end of the 
sixteenth century, not one-tenth of the population was 
in the condition of rab, hrepostnoi kholqp, or serfs by 
writ or kabala. 

The almost boundless extent of land constituting 
Russia was as yet unsurveyed, and no regular limits 
divided or marked the landed property. Thus it was 
easy for the strong to encroach on the lands of the 
rural communes, or on the new clearings made by in- 
dividual freemen ; and such annexations were often 
practised during the domestic wars between the nu- 
merous dukes, and during the time of Tartar domina- 
tion. Iwan the Great (1462-1503) ordered, that who- 
ever held a piece of land in undisputed possession for 
three years became its legal owner. But even the en- 
croachments of the nobles did not transform the free 
laborers or tenants into serfs ; and when a landlord 
was oppressive, whole villages abandoned him and 
contracted for land on other estates. 

Chattels (rab, Tcr&postnoi Tcholojp) might be emanci- 
pated by the free will of the master ; and a captive 
carried away by the Tartars, or a prisoner of war if a 
kholop, became free if he succeeded in escaping from 
captivity and returning to his country. 

In the sixteenth century, all classes of the rural pop- 



244 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

ulation began to be called Christians Qcrestianin), the 
Tartars having bestowed this denomination on them ; 
and this name is now legally in use. Under Tartar 
dominion the rural communities paid tribute per 
head; and for this reason their members could not 
change their domicile without giving security to the 
commune. But after the overthrow of the Tartars by 
Iwan the Great, they recovered the freedom of circu- 
lation. 

The primitive grand-dukes of Kief granted appa- 
nages to their younger children, and sometimes a 
free rural commune constituted such an appanage. 
Yladimir, and after him Yaroslaw, divided the em- 
pire among their children; and thus originated the 
rather independent dukedoms of Twer, Smolensk, 
Wiazma, etc. The number of appanaged princes in 
creased ; and when, after a long and bloody struggle, 
the grand-dukes of Moscow mediatized all these small 
dukes, appanages became private property, and the 
rural communes were owned by the dukes (Jcniazia), 
but under similar conditions of freedom as the com- 
munes constituting the public domains. 

Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Borys 
Goudenoff — an ambitious, unscrupulous, but highly- 
gifted jparvenu — got control of the weak-minded Tsar 
Feodor, ruled during his lifetime, became regent of the 
empire after his death, and finally a murderer and 
usurper. To ingratiate himself with the nobility and 
the Bojars, in 1593 he published an edict (ouJcase), by 
which the free tenants were henceforth prohibited 



SLAVI, SLAVONIANS, SLAVES, RUSSIANS. 245 

from changing their masters or their domicile, and 
were at once reduced to serfs, adscripti glebce. This 
first oppression quickly generated others still more 
odious, which stopped not till they ended in all the 
turpitude of chattelhood — thus justifying the saying 
of Lessing : " Let the devil but get hold of one single 
hair, and he soon clutches you by the whole queue." 
So in 1597 a very rigorous oukase was published con- 
cerning the restitution of fugitive serfs, their wives, 
children and movables. Another oukase, ordering a 
census of all domestic servants to be taken, transformed 
into serfs even those who, six months before, had enter- 
ed private service as absolute freemen. With the excep- 
tion of the population in the free communes constitut- 
ing the tsarian domains, all the other rural populations 
were thus transformed into serfs in the brief space of 
a few years. 

During the seventeenth century, the tsars of the 
house of Komanoff confirmed these oukases. How- 
ever, the serfs were not included in the sale of an 
estate, neither was it permitted to transfer them from 
one estate to another. There were various specific 
denominations for the different forms, of servitude, ac- 
cording to the nature of the labor, the quantity of 
produce, or the number of days' service levied by 
the master. 

In 1718, Peter the Great ordered a general census 
to be taken all over the empire. The census officials, 
most probably through thoughtlessness or caprice, di- 
vided the whole rural population into two sections : 



246 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

1st. The free peasants "belonging to the crown or its 
domains ; and 2dly. All the rest of the peasantry, 
the krestianins or serfs living on private estates, were 
inscribed as Tchrepostnoie Jcholopy, that is, as chattels. 
The primitive Slavic communal organization thus sur- 
vived only on the royal domain, and there it exists till 
the present day. The census of Peter having thus 
fairly inaugurated chattelhood, it immediately began 
to develop itself in all its turpitude. The masters 
grew more reckless and cruel; they sold chattels 
separately from the lands ; they brought them singly 
into market, disregarding all family ties and social 
bonds. Estates were no more valued according to 
the area of land they contained, but according to the 
number of their chattels, who were now called souls 
(duschy). In short, all the worst features of chattel- 
ism, as it exists at the present day in the American 
Slave States, immediately followed the publication of 
this accursed census. 

The rural communes upon the royal domains, how- 
ever, still preserved their ancient organization and 
even comparative freedom; but Peter the Great, as 
well as all his successors, rewarded his favorites, or 
those rendering public service, with estates or grants 
of land ; and as such grants were taken from the royal 
domains, in this way hundreds of thousands of free 
peasants were transformed into chattels. Catharine 
II. also distributed great numbers of such estates 
among her favorites, besides confirming all the privi- 
leges of the nobility; and so likewise did Paul L 



SLAVI, SLAVONIANS, ' SLAVES, RUSSIANS. 24:7 

Alexander I. desired to exempt the peasants in this 
transfer ; but Nicholas I. in reality was the first em- 
peror who granted estates excepting therefrom the 
resident peasantry ; he also published an oukase that 
henceforth no rural communes from the domains shall 
be granted to private individuals. Paul I., in 1797, 
reduced the weekly servitude of the kholop to three 
days, the other three remaining to himself. 

Alexander I. desired to emancipate the serfs through- 
out the whole empire, but only succeeded, and that very 
partially, in the so-called German or Baltic provinces — 
where, moreover, the German nobles and landowners 
succeed, in impoverishing the peasants even more after 
emancipation than they could before. Alexander I. 
also prohibited the sale of single peasants, either male 
or female, separate from their families; he forbade 
their sale in the markets ; and no one could purchase 
or own serfs unless he had at the same time twenty 
acres of land for each family. But all these tutelary 
laws were more or less evaded during his reign. He 
permitted the nobles freely to emancipate their serfs ; 
but very few of them followed the example set by 
Prince Alexander Galitzine and a few others, and 
not more than three hundred thousand families were 
thus set free. Nicholas I. also spoke favorably of 
emancipation, and even attempted it, but unsuccess- 
fully. ' 

During all this period, military service was a great 
engine of emancipation. Enlisted serfs were forever 
free, together with their wives and children. But 



248 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

military service lasted for twenty-five or thirty years, 
and was often more oppressive than serfdom in the 
village. 

Daring the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
the peasantry now and then avenged their wrongs by 
isolated murders of the more oppressive masters and 
their families. Partial insurrections even took place, 
the most celebrated of which is that of Pugatschoff 
under Catharine II., which swept over the bodies of 
slain nobles and officials, from the mountains of Orem- 
bourg to the very gates of Moscow. 

But the day of justice now dawns upon Russia. 
The whole Christian world glorifies the efforts of 
Alexander II., supported by a considerable portion of 
the nobles, to restore freedom and homesteads to the 
twenty millions of serfs. The success of the great 
emancipation movement is beyond doubt, beyond even 
the possibility of being stopped, although the carrying 
out of such a colossal revolution requires time and 
meets with many impediments. 

At the example of Russia the tributary nomads of 
Asiatic Tartary have emancipated their slaves and 
abjured further enslavement; and Turkey, likewise, 
has inscribed her name upon the grand roll of eman- 
cipating empires. 

Thus the whole ancient world shakes off slavery, 
and attempts to wash away its ancient and bloody 
stain ; while the New World, or at least a part of it, 
still glories in the barbarous abomination. 

No special law in Poland decreed the serfdom of the 



SLAVI, SLAVONIANS, SLAVES, KUSSIANS. 249 

rural population, nor in Russia their transformation 
into chattels. Nowhere, indeed, in the whole history 
of man has the conception of justice and law been so 
degraded as to legislate freemen, or those partialty free, 
out of their sacred and inherent rights, beforehand. 
The most bloody records of humanity have not pre- 
served any such act of legislation, and even the name 
of a Nero or a Heliogabalus are free from such a stain. 
It was left to the modern worshippers of the blood- 
reeking slave-demon to enact such laws ; it was left 
to the highest judicial tribunal of the United States to 
brand into the brow of justice, there to remain for 
eternities, the infernal Dred Scott decision. 
11* 



SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 251 



XXI. 

These pages do not touch on slavery among the 
Spaniards. Under the Roman republic and empire, 
Spain shared the lot of the other provinces, as Gaul, 
etc. ; and what has been said in relation to slavery in 
the Roman world applies to her also. The results of 
the German invasions, and the establishment of the 
Goths in Spain, were similar in their bearings to what 
we have already seen as taking place in Gaul and 
Italy. Scarcely had the two races begun to fuse on 
the soil of Spain, and the relations between the con- 
queror and the conquered to be modified and softened, 
when the invasions by the Moors (whose domination 
lasted for nearly seven centuries), threw the Spaniards 
into internal wars. Their protracted efforts to expel 
the invaders fostered the preponderance of the men of 
the sword ; and there is every likelihood that the un- 
avoidable sequellse of war contributed to preserve 
longer in Spain than in any of the other nationalities 
that arose out of the ruins of the Roman empire, cer- 
tain of the features of domestic slavery, of bondage, 
and the feudal tenure. The final expulsion of the Moors 
from the Iberian peninsula was almost immediately 



252 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

followed by the discovery of the continent of Amer- 
ica, and by the formation here of a great Spanish 
empire, and the introduction thereinto of Africans as 
domestic slaves. To master the various relations of 
property and villeinage, of bondage and chattelhood 
in Spain and in the Spanish Main, requires special 
studies, for which, indeed, we have as yet no suffic- 
ient material. At least I had none such within my 
reach — none that was, to my mind, conclusive and 
satisfactory. The Spanish republics, nobly satisfied 
the hopes of humanity by abolishing all kinds of 
bondage and all distinctions of race. The Peruvian 
republic paid to the owners three hundred dollars per 
head for each slave, of every age and both sexes, and 
then liberated them. It may be emphatically asserted, 
that the protracted political confusion prevailing in 
the Spanish American States, has its sources not in the 
act of emancipatory justice, but that it is the result of 
altogether different causes. These, however, do not 
come within the compass of the present investiga- 
tion. 

The many analogies between domestic slavery as 
practised by various nations and races of the past, 
and as it now exists in our Slave States, have been 
often enough pointed out. These analogies prove 
beyond doubt that slavery always corrupts the slave- 
holder and the whole community — be the ethnic pe- 
culiarities of the enslaved race what they- may. 

History shows slavery to have been always most 
luxuriant in those nations where society was most dis- 



SLAVEKY IN HISTORY. 253 

organized, just as noxious animals and plants multiply 
in putrefaction and rottenness. Facts reveal to us 
how far the disorder has already penetrated Southern 
life ; and it would progress even more rapidly were it 
not for the purifying and healing influences (feeble 
though they now be) coming from the JSTorth. 

The civilized Christian world follows with ever-in- 
creasing interest the stages of the political struggle 
in the American Union — sympathizing deeply with 
those who, though they cannot hope to effect an im- 
mediate cure, yet seek to arrest the growth of the 
fatal disorder.* 

Slavery is as fatal to society as are the Southern 
and tropical swamps to human life. And as material 
culture drains the marshes, clears the forests, and ren- 
ders the soil productive and the air healthy : so in 
like manner, will moral and social culture yet make 
the institutions of this republic rich and refulgent — 
unblighted by the presence of a slave ! 

The source of many, if not of all, the political and 
administrative disorders in these States, is to be found 
in the struggles occasioned by the arrogant and ever- 
lasting encroachments on liberty and on the Union, 

* What in common politics is called a " party," " an expedient/' never 
had even the slightest influence upon my convictions or action — events 
having furnished-me more than one occasion to sacrifice to principle 
some leaves of my existence. I now use my right of American citizen- 
ship in voting the " Republican" ticket, the tendencies and actions of 
that organization satisfying my convictions. But excepting some few 
personal friends, the leaders of the party, whether in this city, the 
State, or the Union, are scarcely known to me even by name. 



254 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

by the militant worshippers of slavery. To cure 
these disorders, the growth of the disease — its expan- 
sion over yet uninfected territories — must he stopped : 
such must be the first step in a sanitary direction ; 
and the paramount duty of self-preservation now com- 
mands its adoption. This whole question of Slavery, 
too, must be forced back to where it was left by the 
immortal expounders of Southern instinct and intui- 
tion on slavery, those noble patriots — Henry, Laurens, 
Washington, Jefferson, Mason, Randolph, and a host 
of other great names — now forsworn by their political 
descendants. To conceal the vulture that is devour- 
ing their vitals, the fanatical upholders of slavery 
pervert and degrade all that humanity, morality, civ- 
ilization and history have recognized as sacred. 

The slave-orators and so-called statesmen avouch 
" that no one in the South believes in popular sov- 
ereignty." This unbelief is natural enough ; for pop- 
ular sovereignty can only exist in intelligent, orderly 
and laborious communities. It exists in the Free 
States, and here freemen practically believe in and 
uphold it. But an ignorant and degraded population 
of oligarchs, oppressors and slave-breeders never were 
capable of exercising popular sovereignty, and conse- 
quently nowhere could they ever have faith in it : 
barbarians generally mistrust civilization. Universal 
suffrage is not a failure in the villages and townships 
of the Free States, though it does fail on slave plan- 
tations, or among a so-called free population drilled 
and led by oligarchs. 



SLAVERY W HISTORY. 255 

Human institutions experience ups and downs — 
they have their luminous and their gloomy epochs. 
Ignorant and debased masses throw a shadow over 
universal suffrage and self-government ; and only gen- 
uine freedom goes hand in hand with reason, knowl- 
edge and morality. These, too, mutually reproduce 
each other. It is, therefore, easy to be understood 
how freedom disappears from the Slave South, and is 
no more cherished or believed in. 

Many consider the American institution of self- 
government as a new experiment ; and European ser- 
viles and American slave oligarchs utter fearful fore- 
bodings that the experiment is already a failure. But 
the prophecy only expresses their desires. For this 
so-called experiment is but the natural, progressive 
development of man, and for this reason proves itself 
every day more and more successful in the Free 
States. The kingdoms and nations of the old world 
are now diligently studying this experiment of free- 
dom, and trying to appropriate its beneficent results. 
Agents of European governments uninterruptedly in- 
vestigate the system of free communal schools, the 
manufactures, the inventions, the multifarious indus- 
trial and agricultural progress of the Free States. But 
no government sends its messengers to study out the 
condition of slave plantations, slave huts, or slave 
pens ; for they know well that by the action of self- 
government and universal suffrage, qualitative and 
quantitative knowledge is more generally spread, and 
has reached a far higher grade in the American Free 



256 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

States than among all the militant oligarchs and 
knio;ht-errants of slavery the world over. 

An experiment generally proves successful if made 
with properly adapted and unadulterated materials. 
A structure raised on a treacherous foundation and 
built with rotten materials must fall. It is an ex- 
periment altogether new to the human race to con- 
struct a society and government with chattelhood as 
an integral element. It is an experiment to attempt 
to bring down horrified humanity on its knees to the 
worship of chattelhood and the devilish slave traffic. 
Such an experiment is now being tried by the apostles 
of slavery ; and that too, though morality, civilization 
and history have unanimously and forever pronounced 
the sentence of condemnation against holding property 
in man. The civilized and Christian world of both 
hemispheres and every race unanimously awarded to 
John Brown the crown of a martyr, who fell in the 
cause of human liberty. 

One deviation from a sound social principle is speed- 
ily followed by another ; violence ever begets violence ; 
and this is the fatal genesis of all oppressions and tyr- 
annies. The oligarchic despotism in the Slave States 
runs rapidly through all the stages with which indi- 
vidual despotism has filled the dark records of history. 
It has already succeeded in the suppression of free 
speech and even free thought, violation of seal, cen- 
sorship of the press, and the centring of political 
control in the hands of officials and lacqueys. If in- 
dividual tyrants dispatch their victims by special 



SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 257 

executioners, lynch law and mob law — although often 
executed by misguided " poor whites" — are as lawless 
as the murders of the tyrant, and bear a striking 
analogy to the executions perpetrated by agents or 
court-martials. Despotism drills the masses in all 
kinds of degradation : thus a part of the population 
of the Slave States is drilled in ignorance by the 
slaveholders, and blindly perpetrate their murderous 
biddings. To these deluded men who execute the 
bloody behests of the tyrant, the words of the Christ 
on Calvary apply : " Forgive them ; for they know 
not what they doP 

A society based on a violation of cardinal human 
rights can never be considered free. Freemen are 
never governed by violent passions. Injustice and 
tyranny cannot recede ; they divorce themselves from 
mercy, and are guilty of the most remorseless actions : 
thus fatally, of late, the gallows was once more en- 
nobled. Executions and burning at the stake, amid 
the applaudings of the ignorant and the infuriated, 
are nothing new in history ; and neither is the trans- 
mission of the names of the murderers to the mal- 
edictions" of eternity. 

Human society .will perhaps always be subject, in 
one shape or another, to wrongs and disorders : but 
humanity specially revolts at the hideous wrongs 
which now exist, such as the claim of property in 
man, and the traffic in man. As long as this claim 
is found on the legal record, as long as slavery exists 
as a common fact, futile will be all efforts to stifle 



258 SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 

the voice of freedom, to crush into oblivion the ques- 
tion of slavery, or to expel it from the chambers of 
legislation or the tribunals of the people. It will and 
must ever reappear on the surface : — as in bodily 
disorders, when the virus has eaten its way into the 
innermost organism, external eruptions may be locally, 
healed or closed up, but again they reappear on 
another spot, or attack another organ, until a radical 
cure relieves the body from the poison. Until utterly 
destroyed, slavery will always be paramount to all 
other political questions, to all political complications, 
and it will forever force its way into them all. To a 
greater or less degree, diseases assume the character- 
istics of a prevailing epidemic. When several dis- 
eases are complicated together, the physician first 
attempts to cure the most virulent and dangerous. 
This question of slavery must have a solution ; and 
it is in vain that the weak-minded deny the existence 
of the devouring disorder, or attempt to conjure it 
with paltry expedients. 

Humanity would gratefully applaud even an inter- 
mediate step from absolute chattelhood toward emanci- 
pation, or any public measure foreshadowing an inten- 
tion on the part of the slaveholding States to become 
humane. First of all, let them recognize in the bond- 
man the sacred, imprescriptible, natural rights of man 
and of family; then let them abandon the slave traffic, 
and thus avoid separation of man and wife, of parent 
and child. Even the transformation of the slaves into 
serfs, into adscripti glebce, would be an alleviation, and 



SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 259 

a cheering sign of progress. Certainly, there are 
economic impediments which stand in the way of im- 
mediate and absolute emancipation. The emanci- 
pated might be interested in labor, in the soil,, and in 
freedom, by the possession of homesteads, even if they 
remained under the control of their masters. The 
noble examples set by Prussia and Russia in Europe, 
and by England in her West Indian possessions, might 
be modified and adapted to circumstances and to spe- 
cial conditions. But the present extollers of human 
bondage never will listen to the imploring voice of 
humanity, or to the admonishing warnings of history ; 
they deliberately prepare volcanic eruptions for com- 
ing generations. 

Pro-slavery orators sometimes grow florid, senti- 
mental, and idyllic in their praises and glorification 
of slavery. But gaseous speeches emanate not from 
vigorous or healthy minds. Gas generally arises from 
substances in process of decomposition. Posterity 
venerates only the names of the orators who stand 
np for a sacred cause or a grand idea, who act 
under generous impulses, who defend human rights 
and liberties, and who brand with infamy every kind 
of oppression. 

Every day freedom gets a firmer and more enduring 
foothold in Europe. Every nation of the old continent 
enjoys greater liberty to-day than it did on the birth- 
day of the American Republic. The disorders which 
are the accumulation of almost countless centuries, 
slowly, but nevertheless uninterruptedly, melt away 



260 



SLAVERY IN HISTORY. 



before the breath of the ever-vigorous spirit of hu- 
manity. After a protracted experience of sufferings, 
old Europe, centuries ago, got rid of domestic slavery. 
But what civilization and humanity assert to be 
their greatest afflictions are upheld as blessings in this 
New World by the Young Republic. Sadness and 
even despair fill the mind when witnessing the loftiest 
and best social structure ever erected by man sapped 
to its foundations by the sacrilegious champions of 
human bondage ! 



THE END. 



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